Trust No One
by LyricalKris
Summary: As a woman alone in a world gone wild, Bella couldn't trust anyone. It had been two years since a deadly virus was released in all of the world's major cities. The population is decimated. Modern society is a thing of the past. The things we do to survive.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: So, I started writing this a while back, hoping to have a cushion of chapters to entertain everyone while I navigated new motherhood. Of course, the plan was also to finish Bad Timing and Fighting Chance before my daughter was born.**

 **Jaina Esme is here. She is made of everything awesome. Bad Timing and Fighting Chance are both ALMOST done, and I have a few chapters cushion of this new story and one other. So.. I'm going to beg your indulgence. I'm still writing all the things, but as most of you know, nothing is easy with a newborn. Hope you enjoy this new tale.**

* * *

It had been a long time since Bella had set eyes on a human being she didn't have to distrust on sight. Perhaps ironically, this particular human being was also the most dangerous she'd seen in months.

Approaching carefully, one hand to the long bowie knife in a holster by her side, Bella popped a squat so most of her body would be hidden in the tall grass. She was a few feet in front of him now—her? She couldn't tell.

It was a child. A baby to be precise. She'd seen the miserable creature toddling a short distance, so it must have been around a year old but not much more than that. It was filthy—covered in mud, blood, and, if the smell she could pick up even from this short distance away was any indication, feces. Tear tracks cut through the mess that was his face. Of course. By Bella's estimation, the child could only have been alone for a day or so.

She wiped a hand over her face, considering.

Her main concern was avoiding the fate that had befallen the child's parents. The baby sat between the two bodies, both with their heads bashed in and, from what Bella could see, the source of the dried blood on the baby. It wasn't difficult to put together the pieces. Survivors came in two types—those who'd joined with others and those who hadn't. The loners were vulnerable to attack.

Bella had survived on her own these last two years largely by being as invisible as possible. Even as careful as she was, there'd been a few close calls. A baby—whose main method of communication would be the same shrieking cries that had drawn Bella's attention in the first place—would be as far from invisible as one could possibly get. His cries had likely drawn predators toward them. There were any number of reasons other wanderers and bands would have to attack anyone they could get their hands on. Resources, of course. Or perhaps they'd tried to take the woman. Women were a valuable commodity to some bands.

Or a source of entertainment. Release.

Regardless, now Bella had to decide how this baby's very presence affected her. He was quiet again—his cries reduced to pathetic whimpers and he lay with his head against his mother's leg. He had a filthy hand in his mouth.

Bella's heart twisted, and she closed her eyes. How far had her humanity fallen that she had yet to touch or even reveal herself to the baby? Survival was a hell of a thing. It was her will to survive that made her scared of the child. He'd gotten his parents killed, and Bella could only imagine how easy it would be to share their fate. Even now, being so close to him without knowing if his cries had drawn someone else's attention besides her own, was a risk. She knew the best option for her own survival was to walk away.

A rush of anger went through her. It was an act of ultimate cruelty for the people who killed its parents to leave such a helpless creature alive and alone. She couldn't do the same thing. This left her with two choices, both unimaginable. She could take the baby or she could put him out of his misery.

Bella gripped the handle of her knife convulsively. In the last two years, she had helped two people to death with this knife. But those had been acts of mercy. In both cases, their injuries put them beyond help. They were suffering—already dead but in agony in the meantime. This child was whole and healthy.

A low growl in the distance had her cocking her head. She grimaced. They were on the edge of what had been Yellowstone National Park at the moment—surrounded by wildlife. Yet another concern. It was only some miracle that the bodies hadn't been found by scavengers. It was likely the baby wouldn't have lasted more than an hour more if she hadn't come along.

Nature's way, she mused. And how fitting that they were in a national park—where the rules of nature had been followed as often as possible. It would have been the park's policy not to help a baby animal abandoned by its parents or left motherless through death. Animal instinct centered around survival of the fittest. Would be it be so wrong for Bella to leave the child to the death nature intended?

But she was still a human being with some human instinct of compassion left. It was true that her own survival might depend on the child's ultimate demise, but not like this. They were not animals, and he deserved some measure of humanity. She had enough resources and skills to keep them both alive long enough to get him clean and comfortable, to fill his belly and give him some peace.

It had been a long time since she'd felt human.

Decided, Bella stood, still keeping hunched so the tall grass would shelter her. The child, whose eyes had begun to droop, startled. He whimpered as she approached, eyes wide with fear.

"Shhh," she murmured, stepping softly.

She gathered the child into her arms easily, ignoring the stench. If he wanted to fight, he was far too weak. He cried quietly, but soon laid his head on her shoulder, mumbling what may have been, "Mama, Dada," over and over and over in misery. But he was too exhausted. It was only a minute before he fell dead asleep in her arms.

Bella kept alert, ignoring the burn in one arm as it took the brunt of the child's weight. The other hand she kept close to her knife and other supplies. She had to get to her shelter—high and secure as was possible. Only when she was close did she put her free hand to the child's back, letting herself acknowledge the warmth of him against her.

What in all hells had she done now?

* * *

 **A/N: This fic is dedicated to Betsy.**

 **Many thanks to Betsy, Eleanor, Packy, Mina and Krystal for their constant help. It's not easy keeping up with me and my neediness. Mwah.**


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N: Thank you for all your kind words. My baby and I are both doing well. She eats too much, doesn't sleep, and...well, I guess that runs in the family. ;) Anyway. Onward.**

 **Tread careful, friends. And remember you can always message me if you have questions.**

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This was a bad idea.

Bella tried to set the child down when she got to her shelter. He clung desperately to her, making a sound of alarm. Reminding herself she had whisked him away from what promised to be a brutal death to show him what little kindness she could give, Bella hitched the child onto her hip as she went about the business of caring for him.

Long in the habit of making priority lists in her head, Bella sprang into motion. She needed to do this as quickly as possible. Her own survival depended on her constant vigilance, and she was already discovering how easy it would be to let herself get distracted by the child's needs. The survivor in her was loud with its displeasure at her reckless action.

Bella first set water to boil, frowning because it meant she had to use the fireplace briefly, sending smoke into the mountain air. Then, she went to a shelf where she had already boiled—and cooled—canteens of water. She settled with her back against the wall—shelter was a one-room patrol cabin in the backcountry of Yellowstone—and moved the baby into the crook of her arm, copying the hold she'd seen on television so many times. She made a face as the boy groped at her breast, chapped lips smacking. At least she knew how his parents had kept him fed.

"Sorry." Her voice came out as a croak, sore from disuse.

"Ba?" the child inquired, patting her breast again.

"No. Water." She unscrewed the lid from the canteen and held it to the baby's lips, tilting carefully when he opened his mouth. "Slow down," she admonished gently when he grabbed the sides of the canteen with surprising strength, putting the whole head of the bottle in his mouth to suck greedily.

As Bella suspected, he had to be hungry and thirsty. He was filthy, and that couldn't have been comfortable, but food and drink were higher up on the priority list.

Bella focused her attention elsewhere, trying to ignore the emotion tugging at her long cold insides. It was better not to think too much of the baby. He was hard to ignore. His weight was heavy and awkward in her arms. He squirmed and made grunting and slurping noises as he tried to drink his fill. She tried not to think of his parents and how hard they must have worked to keep this helpless, dependent creature alive in this world gone mad.

A tug at her hair drew her attention. She looked down, finding the child had wrapped her hair in his fist. He wasn't pulling hard. He flexed his fingers, looking at it and then moved his grubby hand to her shirt, feeling and patting. His eyes met hers before she could look away. They were green. A light, pretty green.

A queer warmth spread through blood. Her breath pulled in with a shudder. The little boy's eyes held hers—intelligent, like he was trying to figure her out, and irritated because she wouldn't let him guzzle the water. He brought his hands to the bottle, grasping at it while he worked his tongue along the edge.

Smart little creature.

The survivalist voice—the only voice she'd listened to these last two years—got louder. She knew better than to get attached. This was the closest she'd been to another human being, one who wasn't trying to harm her, in two years. He was so innocent. Too innocent and pure.

Bella stood and put the child down on the floor as gently as she could. She moved quickly to the fire and removed the pot of boiling water off. She jumped when the child toddled into her field of vision, curious hands reaching for the pot. "No!" She snatched him up and away. "That's hot."

See? The voice in her head admonished. He didn't even have enough sense to keep away from a boiling pot of water. They were in Yellowstone, for fuck's sake. They were surrounded by water so hot, it could boil him to nothingness, not to speak of the millions of other dangers from natural to human they faced. It had been a near thing one too many times with Bella taking care of only herself.

And, obviously, the child's parents had failed all three of them.

Bella closed her eyes, her heart twisting as the baby babbled at her. She blew out a long breath.

Mercy was all she'd wanted for the child. Her mission here was to get him clean, to fill his belly and quench his thirst. He would sleep by her side this evening with her to watch over him. He'd be warm tonight. Hopefully free of fear, though nothing she could do could erase what he'd seen and that his parents weren't going to be there when he woke up. That was the deal. That was what she'd promised both of them.

She sighed as she settled him back on the floor and worked at the task of removing his filthy clothes.

Tomorrow, she would take him to the rim, not a long walk away. The child was too young, probably, to appreciate the view, but she could give it to him anyway. She could give him a glimpse of beauty.

"Better that way," she muttered. "You've seen how ugly it gets. You've seen what we do to each other." She held him over the dry sink and poured a cup of now warm water over his hair. He made a sound of delight.

She sighed. "Better that way."

 _ **~0~**_

Morning came too soon.

Bella let the baby sleep as the sun rose. She went about getting ready for the rest of her day—for after. Yellowstone was too dangerous a place to spend the winter in. Fighting to keep warm and fed in a harsh winter would be a full-time job with absolutely no time left over to keep herself safe from the threat of other human beings.

So, toward the end of summer—it was the end of Spring now—she would head south. To do so, she needed a semi-reliable food source. Every year, she figured out how to carry more of what she needed. This year, she was trying to figure out the old school process of jerking beef.

Back before the world had gone to hell, she'd had a dehydrator.

She set about her ritual of sharpening knives and carving her homemade spear to a deadly sharp edge. She strapped each of her knives to their various holsters—both thighs, her boot. She packed a small carrying pack with lunch and a canteen of water along with an empty, large metal water bottle and a smaller sack which she would use if she happened upon wild berries or other edible plants.

The child woke then, crying plaintively for his Ma and Da. He was upset when he only got Bella, and how could she blame him? She changed him out of his dirty things, cleaned him up, and swaddled him in another cloth she'd cut for that purpose. She'd cooked a quail the night before and now slathered the meat with a paste of mashed up berries. The little boy gnawed happily on the piece she gave him, eating in that slow way only very small children were capable of. He looked up at her, grinning happily from his place on the floor, declaring, "Mmm."

Her heart panged, and she looked away.

 _ **~0~**_

Bella replayed the million of reasons she was doing this as she made the short walk. He was a distracting creature. She'd rigged up a sack to carry him—and to bury him, for that matter. He wiggled, and she worried he would fall. He cooed and articulated. Loudly. Her paranoia spiked, and she swore a hundred eyes watched her from the forest.

The child was fixing to get her killed in less than twenty-four hours. Wouldn't that be ironic after all she'd been through? She'd feared every man she'd seen in the last two years, and it would be an infant who brought her down.

Poor little creature. It wasn't his fault; she knew it wasn't his fault.

In a clearing a semi-safe distance from the edge of the mountainside, Bella set the child down on the grass. She offered him a few random items she'd put together—impromptu toys. He set about exploring them, passing them between his uncoordinated fingers with a curious expression on his face.

He was precious.

Bella squatted and caressed his cheek. "I promise, I'll remember you," she whispered.

She walked off a few feet and began to dig with the small tools she'd brought. She didn't let herself think of what she was doing. In such a short period of time, the child had breathed warmth into parts of her that had long gone cold.

Her long forgotten humanity and compassion would leave her in the same boat as his parents—broken, her body discarded and blood painting every available surface. No one would bury her. Whatever was left of her would feed the wildlife.

There was mercy in this. There was good.

When she'd dug a hole sufficiently large—and so small, so desperately small—and gathered enough rocks to cover it, Bella stood. She stared out at the natural beauty all around her—the only beauty left in this awful world—and tried to breathe deep. Her eyes stung.

Some minutes later, she still hadn't moved. She started when she felt a weight at her legs. She looked down. Of course, the little boy had barrelled into her legs. He fell down on his bottom and giggled, looking up at her with a big grin. He used her pants to pull himself back up to his feet and stared up at her with his beautiful green eyes.

With a shuddering sigh, Bella stooped and scooped him into her arms. "Look at you, smiling and laughing after all you went through yesterday." She smoothed his hair back. "Not going to make it easy on me, are you? That's good. You shouldn't. You deserve to go out fighting a good fight."

She walked a few more feet and pointed out across the great distance. "Look. You see? It's better here. Where it's quiet. Where it's peaceful and beautiful." She sunk down, crossing her legs and settling the boy between them. She rocked him a little. "It's not going to hurt."

For a few minutes, she held him close, lamenting the state of the world. She resented so much having to do this. She gritted her teeth against the gritty sob that threatened to rip its way out of her throat. Then, she breathed in deeply and out again.

Then, she reached for the gun she had tucked in her waistband.

Her father's gun. How she loathed the instrument. She didn't even know why she kept it. There'd only been that single bullet in it these last two years.

It was a good use to that bullet. A quick end.

"It's not going to hurt," she whispered both to herself and the child in her arms.

She cocked the gun. Despite how much she despised the weapon, she'd kept it in good working order. She'd cleaned it. She hated the way it felt in her hands. Reaching deep within her, back to the cold, she put the gun against the child's head.

Pain went down her arm as she found herself yanked up and hurled away. She hit the ground, and before she could push up, there was a weight on her, a knee digging into her skin, and her arm wrenched hard behind her back. Terror threatened to blank her vision. She could hear the baby crying.

Whoever was on her was speaking. The words didn't coalesce. The tone was what caught her attention—a low, furious growl.

A man.

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 **A/N: Sooooo. How we doing?**


	3. Chapter 3

**A/N: HALP. My baby doesn't sleep at all during the day!**

 **She is definitely mine.**

 **I would not survive in this Trust No One World. Legit. Speaking of...let's see who jumped Bella.**

* * *

The sound of a baby's gleeful giggle was what drew Edward's attention.

His situation was perilous. He'd strayed too far from his intended path and was hopelessly lost. Well. He supposed technically he knew where he was. The geyser that had taken him by surprise, scalding his arm almost a week ago, was indication enough. He'd opted to climb higher, knowing he was safer from Yellowstone's thermal features up in the mountains. Anyway, he might be able to orient himself from up there, and get back to where he needed to be.

He was hungry, alone, and knew better than to think his survival was a foregone conclusion. It put him in a somber mood. The child's giggle was incongruous and sunny, drawing Edward in like a moth toward light.

He was careful, of course. Whomever was with the child wouldn't necessarily be friendly. It was rare to see a baby with a nomad, so he had to also keep in mind there might be others nearby. To that end, he moved as quietly as possible, sticking to the thick treeline.

As he crested a hill, he glimpsed the child. A tiny thing, running as well as a baby could with his fists up. He fell on his bottom twice, pushing himself up quickly as he continued on his quest up the embankment toward a solitary figure. A woman, he realized.

At least, he thought it was a woman. Her clothes were shapeless. Most people's were. It wasn't as though anyone could go shopping. It wasn't too hard to find a horde of clothes—in abandoned stores and homes—but in the right size? Forget about it.

Still, the figure was slight. Her hair was on the longer side, though, again, that didn't mean anything. It was also ragged. A lot of people, men and women, cut their hair with whatever they could find—usually a knife. Shorter hair was easier to manage in this uncertain time. And it wasn't as though many people had the opportunity to wash theirs often.

The toddler crashed into the woman's legs. Edward watched. Was it wrong to watch like he did from the treeline? Like a creeper? Back in the not-always-civilized world of before, this might be considered very wrong—watching a woman and a child having a private moment while they were none the wiser to his presence.

As it was, though, Edward watched without calling attention to himself for several reasons. This was a beautiful sight. A human moment. He watched the woman point out into the distance, her head bent close to the child as she talked softly. Teaching it? Telling it not to forget what beauty was left in the world?

The woman sunk down, crossing her legs and settling the child on her lap. She rocked him sweetly.

And then pulled out a gun.

When he realized her intention, Edward reacted without thinking. He bolted forward, out of his hiding space, and grabbed the woman by the arm. He wrenched her away, throwing her to the ground and pinning her there, one arm twisted behind her back. He grabbed the wrist of her other hand, smashing it to the ground until she released the gun.

He released his hold then, but it was a mistake. With a mighty cry, she pushed up, sending him sprawling off her. She scrambled for the gun, but he was quicker.

It all happened in a whirlwind. Never in his wildest imaginings would he have thought himself capable of attacking a woman, yet here they were. They wrestled. Edward had enough presence of mind to remember to try not to hurt her. She kept getting her hands on the gun. Her legs and arms were a blur of motion, falling randomly on him as she shrieked out guttural war cries. He kept trying to bite out that he wasn't trying to hurt her, only prevent her from hurting the baby, but he couldn't speak. He was too busy trying to stop her dangerous arms and legs. All the while, the baby screamed and wailed.

Finally, Edward was able to pin her beneath him. He'd caught one arm, holding it out and to the side while his weight held her legs down. He searched frantically for her other arm, meaning to immobilize her completely, when it happened.

At first, Edward thought she had punched him—again—particularly hard in the side and then the leg. It was odd, though. A weird pressure. Shock went through his system like a cold chill down his back and white spots before his eyes. He fell off her to the side onto the ground.

That was a mistake. She rolled over too, straddling him. Her features were twisted into a vicious expression of rage, and she held a wicked looking knife high.

A very bloody knife.

"Stop," he gritted out, hand held up. He fought a wave of nausea. At the sight of the knife, realizing she'd stabbed him, the pain was beginning to kick in.

An incredible, crippling pain.

But she was about to drive the knife into his heart.

"Stop. I wasn't trying to hurt you! You don't have to hurt that baby. It was the baby. You were trying to kill it."

That seemed to make her pause. The scowl faded a degree or two and her hand, knife still clutched at the ready, swayed hesitantly.

"You didn't want to, right?" Edward had to swallow hard. The chill had faded, and an incredible heat was working its way through his blood, held at bay only by adrenaline. His life was still in immediate danger. "I saw you with it. Her. Him. I saw you hold him. You don't want to do it. You don't have to. I can help you."

The woman scoffed, but her eyes darted quickly to where the child sat, bawling. His lusty cries echoed.

Narrowing her eyes at Edward, she lowered the point of her knife toward him menacingly, but she rolled off him. When she got to her feet she held both the knife and the gun. She backed away, the gun pointed at him as she did.

Edward huffed, his head rolling as he slowly—no sudden movements—put his hand to his side. All he felt was sticky, wet, heat. "What do you think I'm going to do to you now? I'm too busy bleeding to death." He was remarkably calm about that fact. He thought about his parents. Would they ever know what happened to him?

The woman, still keeping eyes and gun on him, slid her bloodied knife into a sheath at her ankle. She picked up the child, hoisting it—him, Edward thought—onto her hip. "I don't think I got deep enough to kill you. You twisted."

A sarcastic, "My bad," poised on his lips went unsaid as pain washed over Edward. He rolled to the side just in time, throwing up whatever had passed as breakfast that morning. Each heave of his chest sent a spike of hot agony through him. He groaned, slumping onto his back when he was finally spent.

The child was still hysterical—who could blame him—but he'd turned to muffle his cries against the woman's chest. She stepped carefully closer to Edward, gun still up. "Are you alone? Is there anyone coming for you?"

Edward laughed and instantly regretted it. He gulped in air, staring up at the cloudless sky. He didn't even care that she was pointing a gun at him at this point. "No. No one."

"What the hell were you doing up here alone?"

This time, Edward couldn't hold back his sarcasm. "Trying to find a good place for my fortress of solitude. What do you think I was doing up here?"

"How long have you been watching me?"

"This isn't about you. I wasn't here for you." Rationally, he knew the woman had every right to be fearful and suspicious. But she'd stabbed him, dammit.

"You attacked me, asshole."

"You were trying to murder your baby, asshole." The last word came out choked as Edward swallowed a moan. That hurt. Everything hurt.

"I wasn't... " She huffed. "He's not my baby."

"So you were trying to murder someone else's baby. Well, that makes it better."

"Yeah. His parents are in several pieces down the mountainside. You want me to put him back where I found him?"

That shut Edward up. For a second. "Did you do it?"

"What? No. I'm not a murderer."

"Except babies."

"That was...Fuck! It's not safe up here."

Oh, good. She was going to leave him alone to bleed out on a mountainside. There was a Greek myth about this. He couldn't remember which one. Something about the ravens pecking out the guy's kidneys every day as he lay chained to a rock. The raging heat had faded from his face, and he was chilled now. He shivered, trying not to be afraid and failing.

The woman appeared by his side, making him start and then gasp with the renewed pain that went through him. As he breathed in cool, mountain air, trying desperately not to throw up again, she put the baby in his arm. "Hold this," she commanded.

Bewildered, he held the baby to his side with the arm that wasn't pressed to his wound. The little boy was breathing in sharp, raw gasps now, calming down if only because he had no more energy to cry. He grabbed at Edward's shirt, tugging at random.

"Don't try anything. I'll kill you first and ask questions later."

"My hands are tied," he pointed out. He had an arm full of distraught baby and the other hand was busy keeping his blood in his body.

He watched through hooded eyes as she took several strips of cloth from her bag. She tied a long length tightly around his upper leg, pushing him back down when he instinctively kicked out. "You're going to hurt yourself."

"Yeah, well. You stabbed me. Twice."

"Right. With no provocation whatsoever."

He huffed, too busy trying not to vomit or pass out to speak. He was dizzy, his skin clammy and cold. To distract himself, he watched her.

Sure hands, stained crimson with his blood, confident in what they were doing. He looked up at her face, noting the way she scanned the treeline, her brown eyes sharp. She kept glancing at his hands too, doubtless making sure he wasn't about to attack her again.

She was pretty. And young. Maybe mid-twenties at that. His age.

"What's your name?" he asked, closing his eyes.

"None of your fucking business."

"Just making conversation. Jesus."

"You don't need to know anything about me." She lifted his hand away from his wound and pressed a piece of cloth into it. Hard.

He screamed. He couldn't help it.

"Get up," she said, blunt but at least she didn't sound disgusted.

"Why?" he asked anyway. It wasn't as though he had any more reason than she did to trust anyone. And she _had_ stabbed him.

"You want to lay here and bleed, that's fine with me. That wound needs to be sterilized and dressed. You're welcome to do it yourself while warding off whatever predators might have been drawn by his crying and your bleeding all over the place." She yanked the baby out of his hold as she stood up again. "Or, you can get off your ass, follow me, and since I'm the one who stabbed you, I'll help you. Either way, I'm getting out of here, because we're sitting ducks where we are." She propped her free hand on her hip. "So what's it going to be?"

He was tempted to tell her to fuck off just because. By then, he could tell she was right. He was unlikely to bleed to death. The wounds hurt, a lot, but he didn't think he'd struck anything vital. And if he had, if he was bleeding internally, he'd be helpless to fix himself. That aside, there was a high risk of infection if the wound was left open.

Then there was the child. The little one had finally stopped crying and was clinging to the woman, one fist shoved into his mouth and his troubled eyes on Edward. If he told her to fuck off, odds were that baby was dead.

A great deal of effort and grunting later, Edward started to push to his feet. She was there, offering an arm so he could lean on her while he found his balance. She took the time to search him, finding a gun and a knife of his own. These she stuffed in her bag before she handed him the child. "Keep one hand on your wound and the other on him. I'll help you walk."

In other words, with his hands occupied, he wouldn't be able to attack her. He sighed but nodded.

So, the awkward party began making its way down the mountainside.

"How do you know how to stitch people up?" Edward asked to distract himself from any number of things. Why the woman had been about to kill the child she had otherwise taken care of and comforted. Where she was taking him. If he was actually going to survive this encounter.

And the fact she was still a pretty woman, warm and more than a little intriguing, tucked under his arm as she helped steady him. He wondered who she had been in the world before. "Are you a doctor? A nurse?" he pressed. "Or you just stab a lot of people?"

"I usually have no interest in stitching up the people I've stabbed," she said darkly.

A shiver went down his spine. "Habit of yours?"

She scoffed. "You think you're the first one who's attacked me?"

He was quiet at that. He knew damn well what happened to women who wandered this land unprotected. He shivered again. A man wandering alone was at risk of winding up dead. A woman alone though might suffer any number of horrible fates.

"I really wasn't trying to hurt you," he murmured. "I don't want to hurt anyone."

"Sure," she said.

Before he could think of an argument, knowing she didn't believe him, a tiny cabin came into sight. "Home sweet home, huh?"

"Not anymore," she muttered darkly, and it took him a minute to understand what she meant.

He knew where she lived. It was no longer a safe haven. Whatever happened after she stitched him up, she'd be moving on, probably never to return to this location again.

* * *

 **A/N: Hehehe.**

 **Bella stabbed Edward. How 'bout them apples.**


	4. Chapter 4

**A/N: I like posting on Mondays because Mondays tend to suck. Then again, my kiddo was born on a Monday. Then again...birthing a human sucks no matter which way you slice it. And they did! Slice it.**

 **Hehe. Forgive me. I'm not quite exhausted. Anyway. ONWARD.**

* * *

"This is absurd." Edward closed his eyes, trying not to think about how badly he needed to pee.

The stranger had plied him with whiskey. Not a lot of it—alcohol was precious stuff. Enough to take the edge off. It hadn't helped so much when she cleaned his wound. That had hurt like nothing he'd ever felt before, but it had helped him fall into an exhausted sleep as she stitched him up.

He woke alone, with his hands tied behind his back in an expert knot. He was comfortable enough—resting on a cot for the first time in weeks. But it was possible he was in trouble. Had the stranger left him there to rot?

But then, why had she stitched him up first? Maybe to give him a chance. He would eventually slip out of these binds, right?

The theory didn't hold water though when he looked around the small cabin. The stranger's supplies were still neat and orderly. It was more likely that she didn't want him absconding with her things, which meant wherever she'd gone, she'd be back.

With the baby he wondered, his heart twisting sickeningly. Was that what she'd gone to do? Finish what he'd interrupted?

Heartsick and frantic, he'd struggled for a good hour. The binds were tight, and defeated him easily, especially given the agony that radiated from the wounds in his side and leg. He ended up in more pain than when he'd started and exhausted for his efforts. The lack of food in him definitely wasn't helping. He had no strength left at all.

He was resting, his back against the wall, when the door to the cabin opened. The stranger entered, and Edward was so relieved to see the child in a carrying pack on her hip—gurgling cheerfully—that he almost missed the fact the stranger had a gun trained at his head.

"Jesus Christ, you have trust issues." Edward was too wary to do anything but loll his head against the wall. "You don't even trust your own knot?"

She lowered the gun and walked to the sink, slipping off what Edward realized was a line of fish that had hung around her neck. "It's not impossible to get out of."

"Sure, whatever." He squirmed. "Look, you think maybe you can get me loose so I can take a piss without your help, or you want to do that for me too?"

She hesitated a beat, and he saw red. "Seriously. Two more minutes, and you're the one who's going to have to clean up the mess."

The baby, giggling as he worked his way out of the carrying sack, climbed to his feet and teetered in Edward's direction. "Fshhhhh," he said, patting Edward's shoulder.

The stranger walked to both of them, and Edward couldn't help but flinch when she drew the knife from its sheath. She pushed him forward, and he couldn't help the moment of fear that she would bring the knife down into his back.

She didn't, of course. The knife sliced through the ties and Edward brought his arms forward. She skittered backward, knife held at the ready. He rolled his eyes. "I'm trying for the no sudden movements thing, but I do have to move. Look at me." For how he felt and the cold sweat that had chilled him to the bone, he knew he had to look like the undead at this point. "Do I look like I could cause you any trouble?"

Her eyes flashed, and she stepped forward. She got a solid grip on his arm and helped him to his feet. "Just hurry up." Her expression softened only perceptibly. "I'm going to make us something to eat."

Bracing himself on the wall, Edward made his way outside. He found a tree to lean on and moaned, only partly in agony, as he relieved himself. His wounds throbbed, and he did his best to keep the weight off that leg.

Resting his head against the rough bark of the tree, Edward looked over the terrain. He thought for a long minute about the merits of running off. The woman was wound so tightly, she was just as likely to kill him by accident as on purpose. Then again, if he ran, he wasn't likely to get far in his condition. She would think he was running to someone and kill him. Or he would become some bear's easy lunch.

And there was still the child to consider.

Anyway. She had said something about food. Food was a priority at this point. He needed his strength.

"Sit there," she said the second he stumbled back into the station. She pointed to a chair she'd set so he'd be in her line of sight. "Elevate your leg."

He sighed but didn't argue. Anyway, his leg was killing him.

The little boy crawled to his chair and pulled himself to his feet but looked and spoke at the stranger. "Fshhhh. Fshhh."

"I've got to cook it first," she said. "Here." She walked to them, her hands in fists. Stooping, she set a handful of berries at the baby's feet. Wordless, she handed a second handful to Edward.

"Thank you," he said, taken aback as he accepted the berries, his fingers brushing hers.

She gave a curt nod but stepped quickly back to the counter without saying a word. For minutes, he watched both of them. The baby tried to bend down to pluck the berries, one by one, up, but didn't last long before his balance gave out. He sat heavily on his bottom, just as happy to munch that way. In the way of babies, he experimented with his food more than he ate it, squishing a berry between his fingers and smashing another one into the floor.

Edward, on the other hand, ate slowly. Ravenous though he was, he didn't want his stomach to rebel.

He watched the woman as she worked, once again noting how sure her hands moved as she deboned the fish. The knife she'd used to stab him rested in easy reach, just in case he got any ideas. Testing a theory, he shifted so that the chair he sat on scraped against the floor. Sure enough, her right hand came to rest with her fingers on the hilt of the blade, and she glanced at him. For some reason, though he knew damn well he shouldn't antagonize this woman, Edward flashed her a cocky grin. She narrowed her eyes but said nothing as she turned back to preparing the fish.

"Fshhh, fshh," the boy chanted excitedly in between baby babbling. He'd crawled over to the stranger and pulled himself to his feet using her pant leg. Edward smirked, charmed as he pounded a tiny fist against her ass. The woman's smile was tender as she looked down at him, and the baby grinned back, his mouth covered in sticky fruit juice.

It was such a bizarrely domestic scene. The fact Edward had started out the morning hungry and had been stabbed matched with the brutal place the world had become—no real shock there. But that the woman who'd stabbed him was currently cooking them a hearty dinner while the little baby she'd tried to kill tugged on her pant leg was more than a little surreal.

"So what comes next?" Edward asked, watching her thread five good-sized fish onto makeshift skewers. "You have a plan?"

To her credit, she didn't feign ignorance. "You need a few days to heal at least. It'll give me enough time to get some supplies together. When we're ready, we're going to hike down to the main road together." She picked up her skewers and moved to the fireplace. "Then, you're going to take a walk into the geyser basin."

"What?"

"Relax. You just have to be careful. Though, I saw that burn. I take it you had a run in before." She shook her head. "But the main geyser basins still have walkways. I'll leave your pack and other supplies at the walkway entrance."

"And you make your getaway from the big, bad wolf in the time it takes me to get through the geysers."

The fire roared to life under her capable hands, and she thrust the fish into the flames. "Don't take it personally."

"I don't. It's a decent plan."

The baby crawled up to the woman again, pulling himself up to lean on her shoulder this time. "Ba. Ba. Baaaahhh."

"Give me just one more minute, and I'll get you something to drink," the stranger said, turning her fish skewers in the flame.

"What about him?" Edward watched the way she reached back, absently patting the boy in consolation before taking the skewers in both hands again. "He still gets the death penalty?"

Even across the room he heard her breath catch. She was silent as she finished the skewers and stood up. "I don't expect you to understand. You want to live in whatever naive fantasy world is going on in your head, I can't stop you. Meanwhile, I live in this fucked up, mess of a world. I don't want him to die. It's not his fault he's so helpless. It's not his fault that he's the nail in the coffin of anyone who takes him. The one and only thing I could give him was a quick, merciful death rather than let him be torn to shreds by a predator." She thrust a skewer at him, her eyes brimming with fury and hate. Not, he thought, for him, but of how awful this world could be.

"I understand," he said, swallowing around a thick lump in his throat. He took the skewer from her hand, his fingers again brushing hers briefly before he pulled away. "Did you think about taking him to one of the compounds? Any of them would take a baby." The compounds, where people lived in cooperation with each other, were really the only place a helpless baby could hope to survive.

The stranger laughed, the sound bitter. "You want me to wander onto a random compound?"

Edward grimaced. Naive, she'd called him. He understood why. He was quiet, taking careful bites of the fish, watching as she broke pieces off her skewer to feed the baby. It was a cruel, harsh world they all lived in, but his reality—both because he was a man and because of where he'd been when this all went down—was so different from hers.

"This is good, by the way. Thank you," he said, taking another bite of the fish.

She shrugged. "It's cooked. That's all."

"But you caught it." He considered the fish. "Does make you miss butter and lemon pepper."

The stranger just scoffed. Edward let another minute go by before he tried again. "We have a lot of lemon pepper stored. At my compound. Where I live."

She froze, her spine going rigid, and he realized what that might have sounded like. "I didn't mean for that to sound so threatening. I'm no threat to you. My home is far away. And even if they did send someone after me, they wouldn't know where I am. I…" He rolled his eyes, feeling his cheeks heat. "I got lost. Really lost." He paused a beat. "You would be safe there. Free."

"Safe," she muttered under her breath, rolling her eyes.

He'd expected she wouldn't believe him. "Would you let me take the baby then?"

She stared at him, her eyes hard. "You think you can keep him alive any better than I could?"

He really didn't. The idea of it made his heart pound and his stomach twist with anxiety. "Stranger things have happened. Are you saying you'd prefer he have no chance at all?"

"I'd prefer not to be the one to decide that. If you want to take him, that's ideal for me." She handed the little boy another piece of fish. "Out of sight, out of mind. I never wanted to be the one to pull the trigger." She pulled the child onto her lap. "Just remember—I tried to give him a clean, easy death."

* * *

 **A/N: Heheh. Back soon, my friends.**


	5. Chapter 5

**A/N: Here's a cheerful chapter just right for the holiday season! Heh.**

* * *

"Is this necessary?"

Bella scoffed at the stupidity of the question and continued in her task, retying the man's hands behind his back. "Sleep deprivation is one of the easiest ways to get yourself killed. Just one sleepless night effects everything. Reaction time. Immune system. I can't afford to be foggy out here. None of us can." She straightened up, staring at him. "It's either this or kill you. Only one of those options guarantees I'll be safe from you, so you tell me what you prefer."

He studied her for a long moment. When he sighed, the anger drained from his eyes, replaced by something that looked suspiciously like sadness. "So this is what your life is going to be? This thing happened to all of us, and you're never going to trust another human being again? You're going to live in isolation?" His eyes held hers. "Was it really worth surviving if that's all there is left for you?"

She glared at him, heart pounding. Fury curled in her gut, but she knew damn well it was a cover for something else—fear. The uncertainty of this world as it existed now rocked her to the core. She wanted so desperately to believe there was hope, but it wasn't a guarantee. Not by a longshot.

And he was right. If the world remained as it was right then, she didn't know that the rest of her life would be worth the price she was currently paying for it. She was scared. And angry. So angry that she had to be this way. She didn't want to be the hardened person he saw. Someone who was capable of killing a baby and calling it mercy. She was angry at him because couldn't he see? He was alive—didn't that tell him all he needed to know about the hope that still burned in her heart? She hadn't left the baby to starve to death or be ripped to shreds by animals. Even though she couldn't hope to save him, she hadn't wanted him to die scared, alone, and in pain. There was some humanity in that, wasn't there?

She sat back on her haunches, swallowing hard around the lump that rose in her throat. "I don't think the world will always be this way. It's like you said—some of the compounds have a good thing going. They help each other. They're stronger together. I'm like this because I wasn't fortunate enough to be in the right place when it all went down. I wasn't with the right people.

"Right now, there's no way for me to tell the difference between the good compounds and the dangerous ones, and I don't get second chances. If I trust the wrong person, that's it. Game over." She huffed out a breath. "But this is all so new, really. No one knows who to trust, because no one knows who to blame for what happened. Humanity will win, and it'll be easier to be part of a society again." She pressed her mouth into a thin line, realizing she was rambling, and that she'd revealed vulnerability—potential weakness. She stood up, towering over him, capable where he was handicapped. "Not that it's any of your business what I think is worth surviving."

Bella retreated to the other end of the little cabin, wanting to hide how badly her hands were shaking. It took all her willpower to stop thinking about what she'd taken for granted before—the relative security and comfort of a civilized society. If she thought about it for too long, she'd start to hyperventilate, the weight of loss and want too heavy to breathe through. She set about the task of rearranging the nest of clothes and rags she'd made for herself to sleep on with the baby.

"You're right. That wasn't fair." The man's voice was soft when he spoke again. "I didn't think about it like that. I guess location is the new privilege. I didn't choose where I was born, so to speak, when this all happened. I didn't choose the people I was with on purpose. I was lucky. I know it's dangerous out here, but I also know for a fact I have a safe place to come home to. Well. As safe as you can get at the moment."

As she lay down, putting her arm carefully around the already sleeping little boy, Bella couldn't help but laugh.

"What?" the man asked sounding more curious than offended.

"Just déjà vu ." She sighed and snuffed out the candle she'd been carrying around. "You talking about privilege. I felt like I was back on Facebook for a second there. Social discourse in the comment section."

He chuckled. "I was an avid social justice warrior."

"Me too." She smiled in the darkness. "Hah. #MeToo."

"I wonder that sometimes. If the person, persons, who did this thing to all of us was whatever the opposite of a social justice warrior is? Those people who would explode at the mere thought we should think about the things we say, listen to, consume. They were so angry at what the world was becoming." He scoffed. "Offended that people were offended by innocent bigotry, sexism, and on and on."

Bella was quiet at that, but the man didn't take the hint. After a beat, he asked. "What's your theory? Who do you think did this to us?"

"Scientists," she said.

"What?" he sounded incredulous. "I mean...a scientist had to be the one who manufactured a virus like this."

She'd had way too much time to think about this, and no one to talk to about it for two years. The words tumbled out too fast for her to examine them or to think about if there was some hidden danger in speaking to this man. "The virus wiped out most of the world without prejudice as far as we know. Every country. Every race. Every creed. So who does this benefit? Sure, maybe the people who want to go back to a time when they didn't have to deal with people analyzing books and songs and what have you. But those people get pissed off because other people want to think harder than they want to. No way they can pull off a massive conspiracy—the simultaneous release of an engineered virus in enough cities to infect the entire planet?"

"But scientists are generally on the side of social justice if only because it's scientifically accurate. Sex isn't binary. Gender and race are social constructs. Climate change is…" He gasped.

"You got it, didn't you?"

"Climate change is real," he repeated, sounding breathless. "Scientists are better at the big picture. There was that report a few years ago. We were about to pass the point of no return, the point where we couldn't repair the damage we've done to this planet."

"Earth can repair itself," Bella said.

"But we were too stupid to let it," he concluded. "So you think a bunch of scientists got together to take us out of the equation?"

"They'd have known it was likely a small portion of the population would have natural immunity." Her heart ached. "Like with the plague. Some people just have the DNA to survive."

"Lucky us," he muttered. "Scientists. Humph. And while we start society over again, the planet can recover." He was quiet another few beats. "You know what? I like that. I mean, this is all terrible. But in the long run, they might have saved the human race."

"Maybe it's wishful thinking," Bella admitted. "But I'd like to think there's something more to this than hate."

Quiet filled the darkness for long minutes. Then, "My name is Edward, by the way. Edward Cullen."

When Bella didn't answer, he tried again. "Come on. What's the worst that could happen if I knew your name? Not like I can steal your identity."

In spite of herself, she snorted. She pressed her tongue to the roof of her mouth, thinking. She just wasn't sure humanizing this man was a good idea.

"Bella," she said finally. "Isabella Swan."

 _ **~0~**_

Bella was aware Edward's eyes were on her as she worked. It was a strange feeling. Her skin crawled, knowing she was being watched, but it wasn't as uncomfortable as it should have been. Awkward, yes. For the millionth time, she wondered what kind of fresh hell this was.

Two days ago, she'd stumbled across a miserable, half-starved baby covered in blood.

Yesterday, she'd had her first civilized conversation in nearly two years...with the man she'd stabbed earlier in the day.

Now, she had marched the man and the baby outside, tied the man to a tree by his ankle, and left them to entertain each other while she got on about the business of preparing all of them for their upcoming journey. She catalogued a list in her heads of what she would need today and for the rest of the week. She prioritized her list, adding in a mental reminder to keep an eye on Edward and the baby—just a glance every minute or so. She made sure to face them so any movement on their part would catch her eye. And that, she reminded herself, meant she would have to remember to watch her back lest someone catch her unawares because she was too busy keeping an eye on the shackled man in front of her.

"What are you doing, anyway? Is it meant to be another shelter?" he asked as he watched her gather the young trees she'd chopped down for her purposes.

"Sure. That's my plan. Colonize the previously unspoiled wilderness to erect Bellatown." She shook her head, using the thick stick she'd sharpened to dig a hole in the earth for the first pole. "They're going to be drying racks. It's a way to preserve fish and meat—dry them out as much as possible. Works best if you have an airtight container to store them in, but better to risk food poisoning than starve to death, I guess."

"Airtight containers are hard to carry around." He paused a beat, bouncing the baby on his knee. "I could help."

She snorted. "Right." She drew her knife along the tree, stripping it of its excess branches. "I'll just hand over this big knife…"

"Yeah. I can see how that would be a problem. Just seems wrong to watch you."

"Who else is going to watch the baby? He has even worse survival instincts than you do."

"Hah. Thanks."

Bella shrugged. That was a simple truth. She moved on to the second hole, working as quickly as she could. There was so much to do and, now that her safe haven wasn't so safe, not enough time to do it in.

Some time went by. Bella got into a rhythm, working and keeping an eye out. Truth be told, at this point, Edward looked anything but threatening. He'd turned all his attention on the little boy. The two were playing happily. Bella had to shush them once when the little boy's peels of laughter got too loud.

Poor little boy. Even his joy could get them all killed. When was the last time he'd been able to play?

"We should name him," Edward said when she retreated to the shade near where they sat. The rack had to be built in the sunniest spot possible in order to dry the meat and fish out.

Bella stared at her accidental captive. "What?"

"He needs a name." Edward bounced the baby on his knee. "Maybe an homage. Do you have a father or maybe a brother we can name him after."

A wave of grief and longing went through her. She missed her father so much in that moment, she ached. The idea of attaching his name to this little boy…

"No," she said, her tone flat and cold.

Edward nodded and, to his credit, didn't ask.

"What do you think then?"

Bella's stomach clenched. "I think it's none of my business."

Edward glanced at her briefly, but then he looked back to the baby. "What's your name, buddy? Hmm. Buddy?" He shook his head. "No. My sister must have watched _Elf_ a million times. I got sick of it. Buddy is out." He tapped the baby on the nose. "Do you know your name?"

The baby babbled at him, waving his arms excitedly, but the noise was unintelligible.

"Hmm. Dean. Sam. Bobby. Charlie. Kevin. Castiel."

As much as Bella didn't want any part of this, she had ears. At first she bristled at the sound of Charlie's name. Then she realized what he was doing and snorted. "You were a _Supernatural_ fan."

"Yep. I think about them a lot. They wouldn't have a problem surviving in this world." He opened his hand as the baby thrust a rock he'd found at him. "Might give the kid a leg up to be named after someone who would survive this mess."

"You do remember how often those characters died, right?" She found the canteens she'd brought outside and thrust one at Edward. "This is real life. No convoluted resurrection story."

"That's a good point." He studied the baby. "Harry? The boy who lived?"

Bella rolled her eyes. "Does that make me Voldemort?"

"You're right. Too heavy."

"I told you. None of my business. Name him Albus Severus for all I care."

Edward made a face. "No." He tilted his head, looking back at the baby. "Matthew? It means God's gift."

"God." Bella spat the word. She threw her head back, drinking as much water as three big gulps provided. "How can you still believe in God after all this?"

Edward eyed her over the baby. "I didn't say I believed in God. I said that's what Matthew means."

"If you're trying to give him a name that means something, why would you choose that? If God exists, and the life he has planned for this baby is a gift, he has a fucked up sense of humor."

"Like I said, I don't know that I believe in God, but I can make a case for a divine gift. Isn't that what his life is? He was born after the virus, which means he was born to parents who were immune. Whatever else happens, that's not the thing that's going to kill him. Or us."

"Such a great gift," Bella said, bitter sarcasm leaking into the words. "My presumed ability to bear children who are immune to the virus is part of the reason I can't just wander into any compound."

Whether by chance or design, the virus had killed more women than men. For some, survival had the ultimate goal of reproduction—a biological imperative to produce superior offspring built to repopulate this new world. Some of the men out there weren't interested in Bella's opinion on the matter. She had a womb going to waste, empty as it was. She and her womb were in high demand.

"If you have any other suggestions—"

"No." Bella got to her feet. "I told you. This is none of my business. I don't want any part of it."

"It's just a name. Something to call him. It doesn't need to be deeper than that."

"I don't care."

The words rang hollow even to her own ears. She did care. That was the problem and why she didn't want any part of this process. As it was, she knew when it came time for Edward and the baby to go their separate ways, she would lose valuable brain power worrying and wondering what had become of them. Naming the baby would make it that much more personal.

Bella got to her feet, trying not to listen as Edward rattled off names, trying them on for size. "Aiden? Jamie? Brett? Hunter? Hunter might be more literal when you grow up."

It struck Bella just how hopeful that thought was. She did hope he was right, that the baby had some hope of a future ahead of him.

That they all did.

"Micah? Aaron?"

The boy let out a squeal of a giggle and clapped his hands.

"Aaron?" Edward chuckled. "Okay. Aaron it is."

Bella's lip twitched. Another biblical name. Aaron—brother of Moses. And, if Bella recalled The Ten Commandments, he got in some trouble for worshiping a false idol. That was another popular theory among the believers. That the virus was a punishment from the vengeful god of the old testament. Their society had worshiped so many false idols—celebrities and fashion and any number of things.

But again, it was none of her business. Edward and baby Aaron would soon be out of her life.

* * *

 **A/N: Many thanks to my group for helping me work through my writer's block.**

 **How we doing out there?**

 **I'm amused. My infant is beside me making goofy faces and trying to figure out how to babble. It's adorbs.**


	6. Chapter 6

**A/N: Hola, my friends! I hope the new year is treating you well.**

* * *

A week went by, and Edward watched. There wasn't much more he could do. Despite his repeated offers to help, Bella preferred to have him on a leash. Literally. His usefulness began and ended with keeping the baby quiet, and from the frowns she occasionally cast at him, he would bet Bella didn't think he was good at that.

Watching her was frustrating and fascinating. She had a timeline in her head, and she worked tirelessly from sunup to sundown to get them all where she thought they needed to be. She hunted, fished, and collected plant-life. She built drying racks and sewed sacks. Edward was never more shocked than when he realized she'd retrieved his pack from the woods where he'd dropped it the day he attacked her. She'd patched up the weak stitching and worked out how to hang an extra sack off each side.

Carrying capacity was definitely Bella's priority. She'd rigged up a carrying sack that would keep Aaron at Edward's chest, leaving him protected but Edward's arms free. She'd also made him holsters for the knife he carried as well as one she apparently intended to give him. She'd even made two tiny bags to hang off Aaron's wrists.

"It'll give him something to play with. You can put a few herbs, small whetting stones, or store your bullets in there," she'd said.

Night had long ago fallen, and Edward was, as always, watching. There was something in the way she moved—her every stride full of purpose and strength. She was graceful and sure. It was exactly the opposite he'd felt since this world had gone to hell.

She crossed the cabin to him and knelt beside the bed where he sat. She pulled his shirt up without a word, and brought the candle she was holding closer to his skin to examine his skin. Setting the candle and its holder down, she began to remove the bandages, intent on treating and redressing his healing wounds.

Edward watched the way the candlelight played on her features, caught by the strange intimacy of the moment. She touched him with familiarity, her gentleness as usual incongruent with her rough attitude. Across the room, Aaron made a soft noise in his sleep.

What a strange, warped facsimile of a little family they made.

As though she'd heard his thought, Bella raised her head, catching him staring. For whatever reason, he didn't look away. Several seconds ticked by, and the heat in the room seemed to climb up. A strange energy crawled along his skin.

He wanted to know who she would have been if this thing hadn't happened to all of them.

"What were you before the virus that you know how to do all this?" he asked, breaking the intense silence between them. "You're so graceful about it."

She sucked in a breath and looked down, returning to her work. She was quiet so long he thought she was going to ignore him. It wouldn't be the first time. His attempts to drag her into conversation were largely unsuccessful. He had a 99% failure rate when it came to anything personal.

But nighttime, in the candlelight, had always had a special kind of magic.

She laughed. It was a small, tired sound. "What I was had nothing to do with all this." Another few beats passed as she worried her lip between her teeth—a strangely vulnerable tic for a woman who otherwise seemed to be made of oak. "My father used to take me fishing and hunting. Camping. He taught me a few things. The rest I got from books. I raid every library I find, and I try to commit the helpful stuff to memory." Another beat, and then she spoke quietly, her tone wry. "No one would have called me graceful."

"Not a dancer then?"

She snorted. In the flickering light, the weary warrior faded away, replaced by the young woman she was supposed to be. A bare hint of a smile tugged at the corner of her mouth. "I had my share of bruises. Stitches a few times. I think I was in my own head a lot." Her tiny smile fell. "Now, I know where everything is. Every tree or rock someone could hide behind, the sounds all around me. Hard to bump into things or trip over them when you know exactly where they are."

Edward processed that as she wordlessly guided him to his feet. She slid his pants down just enough to check on the wound there. He tried not to think about her proximity to other parts of him.

It had occurred to him more than once that he'd watched her clean and dress his wound often enough that he felt certain he could do it himself. Yet he never stopped her from helping, and she never pushed the items he needed into his hands. So far from home, and separated from the people he'd been traveling with, he wasn't unaware of his own loneliness. He liked when she touched him like this. Not because it turned him on—though if he let his thoughts drift that way, it wouldn't be difficult—but because he'd never been this long without a soft touch.

He didn't think he'd ever get used to the coldness of this new world. But then, it made moments like these all the more poignant. In his life before, how often had these moments passed him by. Moments when he connected with another human being, lost for whatever reason and found for a minute in the time they shared with him.

For now, he had no one to consider but her. For all they knew, they were the only people alive for miles. Maybe that was why he wanted so badly to know her—this one person who was the world to him at that moment in time.

Not for the first time, he thought about how powerful the night was. When he'd been lost, especially in a place like Yellowstone with its strange, deadly landscape, the night was a place of terror he couldn't see. Tonight, though, the darkness softened the harsh reality of the day. Bella's defenses were down, and she was looking at him like he was a friend instead of someone who could hurt her if she gave him half a chance.

"Were you far from your family when it happened?" He knew the question might break the spell of the night. When she sucked in a breath and glared at him, he almost backpedaled.

Then, she sighed and stood, her task done. "I was with my father, and a...friend." The last word came out acerbic.

"How—" he started and cut himself off. He was already pushing his luck.

"You want to know how I ended up alone even though we survived the virus together." Her tone was flat, and it wasn't a question.

"I'm not trying to pry."

"Yes, you are." Surprisingly, she sat down on the floor, her legs drawn up to her chest as she looked at him. "This is the new socializing, isn't it? This is what I've been missing. Where were you when? Who were you with? What do you think happened?"

"If that was all we talked about at the compound, life would get really boring."

He couldn't read the look that crossed her face then. "Are you trying to say I'm boring?"

Edward quirked an eyebrow. "Oh, sure. Being held captive by a woman who's almost a foot shorter than you is the definition of boring. But you'd make a crappy movie-villain. You're supposed to love the sound of your own voice and monologue your dastardly plans."

"I'm not a…" But she looked off to the side. She huffed her lips twisted up at the corner in what seemed like sad amusement. "I guess I am to you. A villain. I know what I would think if someone kept me tied up."

Edward slid off the bed and sat on the floor with his back against it. The bind at his wrist tugged, and he had to smile. "I don't actually think you're a villain. You're just trying to control as much of this world as you can."

"I don't want to control you. I just don't want you…" She shook her head, her voice tight.

She didn't want him to hurt her, he guessed.

"My dad and I… Well. My dad lived in this tiny town in Washington. I was going to school in Seattle, but it was spring break when it happened. I was visiting him." She sighed. "There were about three thousand people living in Forks, but after it happened there were maybe a hundred of us." She shuddered. "There were bodies. My dad and some of the others did their best to bury everyone, but there were so many bodies."

Edward's stomach twisted. The death toll in her little town was much worse than the average. As it happened, Edward knew the Pacific Northwest relatively well. He knew how spread out the tiny communities could be. With isolated towns—not as much of a melting pot as most of the rest of the country—it went one way or another: either the death toll was catastrophic or nearly the whole town was immune to the virus.

Some day in the future, the scientists of the world would know all the whys and hows. As of today, though, there was only uncertainty. He could only imagine the fear near-total annihilation had caused in a tiny community, so many miles from even a small city.

"My best friend was from the reservation a few miles away. Jacob." She said the name with venom. "They had it worse. Almost the entire tribe. The elders were all gone. My father's girlfriend died, but her two kids lived. There were so few of the men and even fewer women."

She wrapped her arms around her herself, chafing her shoulders and looking away from him at nothing. "They got weird. I should have known when…" She swallowed hard, and when she spoke again, her tone was cold and bitter. "Leah and Emily were the only two left of childbearing age, because I guess that was the priority they settled on. Emily's face… I should have known then."

Edward's stomach was in his throat. He breathed shallowly, his hands in fists by his side.

"Jacob and I were going through the empty houses. We were trying to keep together—everyone left in the town. We were gathering our resources." She took a deep breath. "He was...I mean, I knew he wanted more, before. He'd always made that clear. And his people were about to go extinct. He was...out of his mind."

Edward held up a hand, his heart racing. "Don't make excuses. There's no excuse."

"Yeah." She cleared her throat. "Anyway. I was lucky that time. Someone heard me screaming. They pulled him off me, which was something. Jake was huge."

The mental image of a huge, hulking man pinning Bella beneath him made rage surge through Edward's bloodstream. He felt an urge to protect this woman who was still a stranger to him. It didn't matter that she'd proved herself more than capable. He wanted to find this asshole and, if he wasn't dead already, beat him to death with his own two hands for what he'd done.

"My dad had taught me how to protect myself," Bella said, her voice far away now. "But Jake was my friend. I didn't really believe what was happening." She sighed and looked to Edward with a shrug. "The survivors gathered, trying to figure out what to do with him. The way they were talking…" She shrugged. "It's like I said. His tribe was about to be extinct. A lot of people there, a lot of men, understood."

"That's bullshit," Edward said through clenched teeth.

She scoffed. "That's nothing new. Not even for the old world. And in this world, it shouldn't even be a surprise. The way things are now, I almost get it. What were they going to do? Not like there's a jail we could throw him in. You're not going to give the death penalty to someone just acting on his primal urges. Boys will be boys and all that. Biological imperative."

Edward sighed softly under his breath, knowing she was right. Even in the civilized society of the past, justice for victims of sexual assault was pathetically rare. As he'd observed before, women were particularly vulnerable in this new world. Edward had met people like the man who'd attacked her—those who became obsessed with the idea of warding off extinction through procreation by whatever means necessary. Some might consider Bella's mini-society one of the better ones out there. At least someone had protected her, had stopped her so-called friend.

"That was when my Dad and I decided that we were better off alone," Bella said. "I knew I could trust him. He was the only person left I could trust."

Obviously, she hadn't been able to trust her only friend.

Edward swallowed around the lump in his throat, trying to keep his breathing calm. "And what happened to your father?" he asked quietly.

She looked away again, rocking back and forth just slightly. She nodded her head across the cabin where little Aaron slept peacefully. "Same thing I think happened to his parents. It was a year and a half ago. We were camped out for the winter in Capitol Reef National Park. Mild winters in Utah, you know. There were three of them. Two guys and a woman actually. She had bright red hair." She breathed in and out slowly. "We had supplies. They wanted what we had. It was simple as that. We weren't paying good enough attention. We'd been alone for so long." She readjusted her grip on her legs, tugging them tighter against her chest. "They killed my dad instantly. Slit his throat. But me…"

"Bella," Edward whispered, horrified and heartbroken.

She raised her head, looking at him with angry, cold eyes. "I told you you weren't the first person I've stabbed."

He straightened up, a jolt of shock running through him at the danger in her expression and the surprise of her words.

"I had to wait. I had to wait until the blond was on top of me. He had his hand…" She swallowed hard and shook her head. "I had to wait because the only knife I could get to was a small one, and he had to be close for me to jab it into his heart. I knew I had to kill him or he would kill me."

"Jesus Christ," he muttered under his breath.

"I killed the woman too, when she attacked me," she said flatly. "The other one ran off. Christ, it took me so long to stop thinking he was lurking around every corner. I kept waiting for him to come for me."

They sat in silence, her words heavy between them, for full minutes. The only sound was the noise of the wilderness outside and the breath of the three of them in the small space.

Bella's shoulders slumped. She took in a shuddering breath and then climbed to her feet. She ran a hand through her hair, and the moonlight from the window struck her in such a way, it knocked him breathless.

She really was a beauty, and after that story, how could he help but see the strength in every line of her body. She was an angel of wrath. A goddess.

Her features were painted momentarily in indecision, but then, her look turned determined, some decision made. She pulled a small knife from the sheath at her ankle. He had to wonder if it was the same knife she'd used on the people who'd killed her father, who doubtless would have killed her. He pressed his back against the bed when she stepped toward him, awed and ever-so-slightly afraid of her. She knelt, and he realized she was about to undo his bindings.

"Don't," he said, surprising both of them.

She looked at him with furrowed eyebrows. He blinked. Her face was so close again.

"You'll never sleep if you do," he said. "You need your sleep, remember? Sleeplessness effects everything."

She stared at him for a few beats and smiled. It was a small, gentle thing. He smiled back. The atmosphere between them seemed warmer than before. She put a hand to his shoulder, squeezing once before she retreated across the room and settled down next to the baby. Edward climbed in bed.

Neither of them spoke again for the rest of the night.

* * *

 **A/N: Progress. Yes? Maybe? :D**


	7. Chapter 7

**A.N: Hello, my ducks! I trust you're having a good February. Mine is very hectic. Work is in full swing and the baby...well. She's a baby. A beautiful, needy, awesome baby.**

* * *

The man was helpless.

"How the hell did you survive this far?" Bella asked, somewhere between exasperated and amused. She took the mangled snare from his hands and settled down next to him, redoing it with slow movements so he could see.

He sighed, watching her hands. "I was on a cruise when it happened."

She glanced up at him and arched an eyebrow. His lip twitched, and he continued. "We were on our way back from Alaska." He paused a beat. "To Seattle."

Finished with the snare, she put it in his hands so he could examine it. He looked down, passing the loop through his hands. "The captain dropped anchor far enough from land that we'd be safe while we figured out what was going on."

"Are you trying to tell me your compound is a goddamn cruise ship?" she asked, incredulous. She took the snare from him and undid it, then put the rope in his hands so he could try again.

Rather than answer right away, he tried again to make the loop for the snare. When he fumbled it, and the rope knotted too soon, he gave a huff of displeasure. "Shit," he muttered.

Aaron, playing next to them, looked up with a big grin. "Shhhht."

They both looked at him. Edward gave a beleaguered sigh. "You know what? We get to remake the world. I vote we abolish swear words. Not the actual words. Just the weird belief that those words are somehow worse than other words."

Bella smirked. "We all have bigger fish to fry than fuck?"

"I mean...I would rather fry a fish than fuck it, that's true."

She laughed. An honest-to-god guffaw. "Don't think I didn't notice that you didn't answer the question."

"I got distracted." He scowled at the rope in his hand.

"Shhhht." Aaron nodded.

"What he said." Edward sighed and started again, trying to make the tightening loop of rope. "We stayed on the ship for the first month, but after radio communication went dead, we decided we had to do something more permanent. We sent a small party out on one of the tenders to the San Juan islands. Myself included."

"If you were on a ship, that means you weren't exposed to the virus when it dropped." Bella picked up her latest project—a doll made of cloth she was sewing to give Aaron something to play with and hold on the long journey ahead. "You could have died."

"Three members of our party did."

The words hung between them. Bella tried to imagine it—facing death on purpose. Every day of her life was about survival. "I would have stayed on the boat," she admitted.

"No, you wouldn't have."

She looked up and found he'd fixed her with a stare that unnerved her for reasons she couldn't quite place. It was an almost admiring expression. "You play a long game," he said. "A cruise ship is a better place than most. It's floating city, but we couldn't last forever by ourselves out there. Our long term survival depended on us getting to land." He shrugged. "And honestly, if I wasn't immune, I was a goner. There's no defense. Not yet."

"True. But still. A ship or a deserted island is about the only place you'd be able to escape an airborne virus. Though, I've wondered how that's playing out, you know, with military vessels? Weapons and paranoia don't mix well."

He lifted his head, fixed her with a look, and arched an eyebrow. "You don't say."

She narrowed her eyes at him. "Spoken like a man who wants to be tied up again."

"Sounds like it could be fun under the right circumstances." He flashed a lopsided grin at her. "I'll try anything once."

Shock went down her spine spreading an odd, warm tingle through her body. Her cheeks flushed hot. She'd decided she could trust that he wasn't going to murder her, but when had they become good enough friends that they could joke this way? Their eyes met, and Bella remembered what it was like to walk through life with a functioning libido.

Edward cleared his throat and looked back to his work. Bella looked to hers. The silence between them was rife with something Bella couldn't quite name. Desire? Maybe a fervent wish that this world was calm again. As calm as the world had ever been. Wishing that they were on a college campus or a coffee shop or a bar or wherever they could have met where she could be at least be reasonably comfortable with his gentle flirt.

Aaron toddled over to her. "Shhhhhht," he said, clinging to her arm, and she wanted to smile. But always at the topmost of her thoughts was that rational voice whispering harsh truths into her ear. This little boy wasn't equipped to survive in the world as it was. And his neediness was going to kill Edward too. It wasn't a certainty, but it was a high probability.

She needed to accept the world as it was, not as she wished it to be.

"Hey, look at that."

Bella looked to Edward and found him holding a perfect loop up in triumph. She smiled and pushed to her feet. "Now that we can work with."

 _ **~0~**_

They spent the rest of the day setting snares, and Edward made a rabbit stew that night to celebrate his first catch. The cabin smelled good. Edward had a shaker of chili pepper in his bag. It was surprising the difference a few herbs and spices could make. It had been a long time since the prospect of food had been pleasurable. It was, like everything these days, a matter of survival. It wasn't even a matter of proper nutrition. Food was energy; that was all.

While dinner cooked, Bella distracted Aaron. It was ironic. When she'd first come to this cabin, she'd found the deck of cards and had the bitter thought she'd never have anyone to play cards with. Solitaire just wasn't her game. Now, she handed Aaron one card after another, praising him when he got the card in the slotted container she'd set in front of him.

"Did you have a baby, Bella?" Edward asked, his voice soft.

Bella started. "What? No."

"Sorry." He returned his steady gaze to the pot over the fire. "It's just something my sister did when my niece was that age." He nodded at Aaron.

"My best friend had a baby when we were in high school. She was all about toys she didn't have to buy because she had no money." Her heart panged. Neither Jessica nor her beautiful baby boy had survived the virus.

"A cheap toy that also helps with development? Alice was all about that too."

"She was?" There was purposeful emphasis on the last word.

"Well, Cynthia would be five now." His voice was wistful. "We haven't been able to find them—Alice, her husband, or Cynthia. I'd be lying if I said that wasn't part of why I joined up with the expedition team."

"The expedition team?"

He took the pot from the fire and placed it on the counter. There, he poured it into their two bowls. "We recolonized the islands, so to speak, with our cruise ship, two others and a few people who owned their own yachts and boats. We buried the dead. Organized our resources. We even have a border of ships around the island to serve as lookouts. You know, just in case."

"You mean a good defense is necessary to survive?" She fixed him with a pointed look.

He set a bowl in front of her and sank to the floor, his legs crossed, with his own bowl in his lap. "I never said it wasn't. Anyhow, we have a council. It was decided we had to attempt contact with the rest of the world. We put together three parties of ten and set out in different directions. The mission is to try to find other compounds, make contact if we think it's safe to do so—exchange information if nothing else—and to bring back stragglers, particularly if we think they're useful to the society we're building." He looked at her over the rim of the bowl he brought to his lips.

Her heartbeat fluttered. Was he about to try to recruit her?

But he went on, letting the moment pass. "You're not wrong about me not being good at surviving on my own." He shook his head, his expression rueful. "I was our group's scout. I'm a good runner. Fast and quiet."

He _had_ snuck up on her after all.

"It was my job to run ahead, see what I could see so, if we came on a compound or a challenge in the terrain, we would know about it ahead of time. We could plan." His brow furrowed. "That's what happened. I ran ahead. One day out and one day back to catch up to my group. But when I got to where they were supposed to be, they weren't there. I think there must have been some kind of encounter. I found evidence of more than just our party in the area." He paused a beat. "And I had heard gunshots when I was alone." He shook his head quickly, clearly not wanting to dwell.

"Long story short… I tried to follow the footprints I could find. I strayed off the trail we'd marked on our map trying to find my party." He set his bowl down and plucked a piece of meat out of the broth. He shook it and offered it to Aaron who had wandered over. "I didn't realize I was this close to Yellowstone. I think that's what happened. Down closer to the main road, there's a lot more evidence of human life."

"Familiar landmarks," Bella said with a sigh. It was the reason she stayed away from the main road. That and, as Edward had discovered from the burn on his arm, the geothermal features that made Yellowstone so famous were also not ideal for survival. Not many people stayed near Yellowstone—modern folks weren't equipped to deal with the unchecked wilderness—but the need for familiarity, a landmark they knew from _before_ , drew survivors to the area for at least a pass through.

Edward nodded and sighed. "We were trying to get as close as possible to Chicago. That was where my sister and her family were, the last I knew."

"You're supposed to get back to the islands before winter?" she guessed.

"Yes."

Which meant it was far too late to try to get to Chicago. As it was, the trek from the Pacific Northwest to Chicago would have taken about two months with a fast-moving party and relatively few delays. They'd have had just enough time to explore the area before they had to come back, or else risk getting caught in cold weather.

"Well, the good news is, that gives you plenty of time to get from here back to your island," she said quietly, not adding that traveling with the child would make it more difficult on top of more dangerous. She paused a beat. "It's just your sister you were looking for?"

He chuckled, pulling Aaron onto his lap so he could help him eat. "The cruise was with my family. Mom. Dad. Big brother. His wife. Their baby boy." His lips turned down. "Rosalie didn't survive. When we landed? The virus took her out."

"I'm so sorry," Bella said.

Edward nodded and looked up. "What about you? Do you have any lost family?"

"My mother." Bella's heart twisted painfully, and she closed her eyes. "She lived in Phoenix. We were able to talk to her before the phone lines went down, so I know she survived the virus. She and my baby sister Angela survived. Her husband Phil, and my little brother Mikey didn't make it." She had to swallow hard before she hurried on. "I went to Phoenix the first year. Their house was empty." Just two crudely marked graves in the backyard.

They ate for a few minutes in relative silence, save for the sound of Aaron babbling between bites.

"You could come with us, you know," Edward said, his tone quiet. "It's good on the island. The people are good. We have a council, like I said, to keep ourselves in check. My dad _and_ my mom are on it. There's enough food. Enough work. You'd even have your own house." He shrugged as though it were no big deal. "Something to think about."

To be a part of a community again. It was a tempting, terrifying thought. "You just want me to come because it increases the chances of your surviving long enough to get there." She didn't even know if she was teasing.

He shrugged again. "That doesn't hurt," he admitted. "I already said I wasn't picked for the expedition because of my survival skills. And it would be fulfilling that part of the expedition—bringing back useful people."

"Right. But it would decrease _my_ chance of surviving to go with you."

"Yes and no."

She shook her head. "It's either yes or no. This is a black and white issue."

"No, it isn't. Yes, getting there, the baby does make it harder to survive. But to get to the Islands from here will take a month max. That's only one month we'd be in a great amount of danger. The kid's parents kept him alive a whole year. If we can survive that month, then your overall chance of survival within the society of the Islands goes up considerably."

She stared at him. It made sense. She couldn't refute that logic. If the society they'd built on the Islands was peaceful. If it was fair. If the men there didn't decide that their size and strength meant they were in charge. If the men didn't believe it was their duty to repopulate the earth with any available woman, willing or not.

If. If. If.

"Just think about it," Edward said. Then, he grinned and raised his bowl. "The spices I brought with me? There's plenty more where that came from on the Islands."

In spite of herself, she smiled.

 _ **~0~**_

Bella slipped out of the cabin just as the sun was coming up. Aaron and Edward were both asleep, curled up next to each other in what she had to admit was a sweet picture. Well. As sweet as a picture could be when Edward was still bound at the wrists. He insisted on being bound at night, and she was grateful. She couldn't deny it helped her sleep better knowing he was at least a little bit impaired.

In her travels, it was her habit to go through libraries for resourceful books. In one of these, she'd found detailed instructions about how to make a bow and arrow for hunting purposes. As she traveled, she'd been trying to perfect her knife skills in order to get the right flexibility and strength. She finally had a crude but workable bow and enough arrows. She wanted to dedicate this early morning to practice. Then, she would set out to clear the snares that she and Edward had set the day before.

And if she could manage to take out one of the deer who frequented the area, well, that would just be a bonus.

She set about her morning routine, unsetting the traps she had littered around the cabin. Most of them were just set to make noise, hopefully waking her if something was coming. These were tripped frequently by animals. It made for a restless night, but Bella would never be caught sleeping. She also checked a few trees she knew had birds nests and collected four hot eggs which she hid for safekeeping.

For perhaps half an hour, she worked with the arrow. Her knuckles got scraped to high hell—an injury she should have predicted. She made a mental note to wrap her fingers the next time she tried the bow but kept right on practicing. Mostly, she aimed for bushes so she could mark her accuracy. Once, though, she did aim for and hit a tree. It was so satisfying to see the arrow she'd made could actually piece bark—and therefore fur—and sink deep.

It was as she was thinking it was time to head back that a movement caught the corner of her eyes. Automatically, she sank low and scrambled for the cover of a large boulder.

Peering around it through the trees, she spotted a shape. A deer, she recognized. A large one too. And it appeared to be alone, which was unusual but not altogether unheard of. Maybe its mates were a little further out of eyesight.

Though she expected her bow skills were far too rudimentary to take down a deer, she didn't think it would hurt to try. Bow and arrow in hand, she slid out from behind the boulder and began to make her way, quiet as a whisper, toward the deer.

She stepped softly, concentrated on keeping out of its periphery and not snapping any of the branches that littered the ground. She would have to be pretty close to have a chance until her skills were better.

Her first and only warning came suddenly. The deer, eating peacefully one moment, raised its head the next, its body going rigid. The next moment, it was off like a shot.

Bella took one more step. Then, before she could process the deer's flight, she felt a sharp tug and found herself flying, hurtling toward the ground. She felt a rush of agony at her ankle, then her head contacted with ground, rock. The world went white and then black.

* * *

 **A/N: I'm going to try to put a priority rush on the next chapter!**


	8. Chapter 8

**A/N: Sorry, loves. I didn't mean to leave you so long. Infant, work, sick. LIFE, you know what I mean? It's not nearly as exciting as these two's lives but DAMN is it a time suck.**

 **I mean, BABIES. Amirite?**

Edward woke up with a start. He blinked rapidly, looking around the dim light of the cabin, already on the defense though he couldn't tell why.

His spidey sense was tingling.

The baby sighed in his sleep, whole and unbothered. The cabin was quiet except for the whisper of the wind outside. He looked around the cabin again, struggling to push himself upright with his bound hands.

Bella was gone.

That wasn't what was wrong. The woman defined restless sleeping. She was up with the sun if not before it and would probably be back with breakfast and maybe a car she made from the materials she found in the forest.

Edward wiggled, managing to get his feet firmly on the floor so he could stand without the use of his hands and without waking Aaron. He peered out the cabin's front window, brow furrowed as he tried to figure out what was wrong.

Looking out at the tranquil scenery, Edward figured out what was wrong. It was quiet. Too quiet.

In Bella's survival lessons, she had harped on constant vigilance. Being aware of his surroundings at all times would give him a vast amount of information. Notice everything, she'd said more than once. Broken tree branches could indicate a place where a large mammal had passed. There were tracks and droppings.

In this case, the answer was in the silence. The birds weren't chirping—a strong indicator that there was a predator nearby.

Even though he knew Bella knew the signs better than he ever would, Edward couldn't help but be worried. Hell, in all likelihood, she was the predator the birds were reacting to, but still. He would feel a lot better when she was in front of him again, safe and sound. He peered harder through the window, scanning the forest. He just couldn't shake the eerie feeling there was trouble about.

He tugged at his binds and looked out again. He glanced at the sleeping baby. "Fuck this," he muttered under his breath. He hurried over to the counter where Bella had left one of her hunting knives. It took some doing, but he managed to get the door open and keep the knife in his hand.

Once outside, he went to a tree he knew had a fork he could use to his advantage. He stopped dead at the noise he heard. An unmistakable growl.

The noise was too quiet to be near enough to be a threat to him. The growl echoed a bit as though it were nearer to the open space. A bear? Maybe. He drove the butt of the knife into the fork in the tree, wedging it in the fork, blade up. He raised his hands, pulling them apart as far as the rope would allow. Carefully and quickly, he cut through the rope and let it fall to the forest floor. He wrenched the knife out of the fork, thanking Bella's meticulous planning for keeping it razor sharp.

Breath left him in a gust just before he went charging into the forest. He glanced back at the cabin, thinking about the sleeping baby and all the things that could kill or maim him in the cabin. After all, he had no proof anything was wrong. Bella had more than proven she knew how to handle herself in any given situation.

But his goddamn spidey sense.

The growl came again, and Edward took off, hoping like hell he was making the right decision. This woman was going to kill him for doing this, but what if…

He skidded to a halt, startled by a godawful sound—some snarling, growling, bellowing noise. Not one beast, he realized, but two. He picked up his step, moving faster now though he was sure to stay aware of his surroundings. He scanned the forest, and was careful to dodge branches and foliage that would have made more noise than was necessary. Though, with the racket, there wasn't much chance of him being heard by whatever was making those awful sounds.

He saw the commotion first as a blur of dark colors. Trees shook and cracked. Dust kicked up in clouds in the air. Then, the image resolved itself and Edward sucked in a sharp breath.

It was a fight to the death between a moose and a bear.

His first thought was that Bella was right. This was the first moose he'd ever seen in real life. Moose were ginormous. The beast was easily taller than a van; just massive. And it looked as fierce as Bella had promised it would when it reared up, bellowing, and kicked its massive hooves at the bear just as the beast took a swipe at it.

Bears, Bella had said, were just as eager as humans to avoid each other. They wouldn't attack just because. They would, however, attack when startled, when cubs were present, and when defending a meal. In those cases, the bear would fight viciously.

Edward's blood ran cold as he took in the scene. It seemed that, in this case, the rearing moose—itself bellowing, making a horrendous racket—might have been in trouble because it had interrupted the bear's meal. Its meal being the woman sprawling on the ground near the melee, her eyes closed and her face streaked with blood.

Every time the massive bodies landed near Bella, Edward flinched. He clutched the knife in his hand, unsure what to do.

She was alive. He could see her chest rise and fall from where he was. Her body was twisted at weird angle, one leg up off the ground. He cursed under his breath when he saw why. Her ankle was caught in a snare. His snare. A snare he'd set without telling her—a little larger than the ones she'd taught him to make to catch rabbits. The tracks he'd spotted were larger—definitely not moose and bear large, but maybe some kind of cat. He'd wanted to surprise her with enough meat to feed them for a few days.

She was definitely going to kill him.

But she'd have to be alive to do it.

Brandishing the knife, Edward crept forward. The closer he got, the more he thought he had to be insane. The bear's claws were sharp. It's teeth, dripping with saliva as it roared, were as big as his fingers. The moose screamed as it caught a claw across its chest. The air smelled of blood.

The bear crashed backward into the branch that held Bella, twisting her leg higher. She came awake with a cry looking like something out of a movie—blood running down her face in rivulets, dirt everywhere, fear in her eyes as another roar rang out through the forest.

As the distinctly non-CGI bear and moose thrust their battle to the death in the opposite direction of Bella's very breakable body, Edward darted forward. The snare wasn't very thick, and it only took a solid whack with the knife to get Bella loose. The branch that had held the snare flung upward, making way too much noise for Edward's comfort. The bear turned its head to assess the new threat, but the moose kicked it right in the throat, distracting it back again.

"Holy hell," Bella muttered under her breath, struggling to pull herself upright.

Edward threw the knife to the ground and gathered her up in his arms. "We're out of here."

In retrospect, Edward had no idea how he had enough breath in his body to run with her as fast as he did. Adrenaline hummed in his veins, and he darted through the forest like he didn't have to breathe. Like he was some supernatural creature with limitless strength and stamina.

He got to the cabin and set her down on the floor, slamming the door behind them. He peered out the window, scanning the treeline.

"A bear isn't going to pursue us," Bella said, her words slurred. "We're safe here."

He turned away from the window, his mind clearing a bit. He blinked rapidly, more information seeping in.

The baby was awake. He was sitting in the mess of blankets, crying hysterically. Edward realized he hadn't even processed the noise as it matched his chaotic mind. He took one step toward the boy and then remembered.

"You're hurt." He dropped down to one knee beside Bella who was, again, trying to get upright. He pushed her back down gently. "Let me see."

She sighed but settled down, both of them catching their breaths as Edward tried to find the source of the blood. He'd been expecting to find the bear had gotten its claws into her, but that didn't seem to be the case. Bella hissed in pain as he touched a place up near her temple that looked swollen and bloody.

"You hit your head," he realized out loud.

Aaron had toddled over, his cries turning to whimpers and then back to cries. He tugged at Edward's side.

Bella opened her eyes and put a hand on the boy's shoulder. "Hey. Hey. It's okay, little guy. Look. I'm awake. Not like your mom and dad."

"Mama," Aaron said plaintively.

"Did the bear get you at all?" Edward asked, feeling his way around the back of her head.

She looked perplexed. "There was a bear?"

He froze and looked in her eyes. Her eyes seemed hazy. "There _was_ a bear," she said, her voice scratchy. "Shit. I thought that was a nightmare."

Edward's lip twitched. "You have a concussion."

"Well. That sucks."

"You know, the best thing for a concussion is to not use your brain as much as possible for a few days. You're going to have to let me do all the thinking for a little while."

She stared at him and groaned. "Shit. We're all going to die."

 _ **~0~**_

Unlike on television, concussions in real life weren't something from which one could recover from one minute to the next. Edward hadn't been kidding about Bella not using her brain for a little while. In the world before, patients were advised not to read, write, or engage in social media, among other things. Also unlike television, it wasn't necessary to keep the concussed awake. Sleep and rest could only help her state.

Of course, Bella being Bella, she fought it. She tried to get up, only to be forced down by dizziness and the sprained ankle she'd suffered. Because he'd known she would exert herself and what would probably happen, Edward was ready when nausea overtook her.

"I can keep us alive in this cabin for a few days," he said as he helped her back to bed and knelt at her side. He brushed a strand of hair away from her clammy head, careful not to upset that bandage over her wound. "You push this, you're going to be weaker for longer."

"Gotta be vigilant," she muttered, though her eyelids were already drooping. "We made so much noise. They'll know we're here."

He pressed the back of his hand to her forehead, checking that she wasn't feverish—a sign of possible infection. "You're not alone right now, Bella. I'm being careful. I promise."

She grunted, obviously not too satisfied, but drifted off.

She woke some hours later, panicked and disoriented, calling his name.

"Hey, I'm right here." He knelt again by her side, catching the hand she waved in the air. She wasn't really awake, he saw. "Shhh. Just rest. Dinner will be done soon."

"Edward," she mumbled, but her eyelids drooped.

He rubbed her knuckles, shushing her as she calmed. Aaron ambled over and, adorably, joined in, whispering, "Shh. Shh. Shh," though with considerably more spit bubbles than Edward.

When he thought Bella had drifted off again, Edward started to pull away. She grabbed his hand, surprisingly strong, and when he looked back, her eyes were wide open. "I don't want to be alone anymore," she said.

He gripped her hands in his, surprised at the vulnerability he saw. "You don't have to be. I told you."

She held his gaze for another moment and then rested her head on the pillow, asleep again in a heartbeat.

 _ **~0~**_

A couple of days later, Edward watched Bella cross the cabin, favoring her tender leg. He gritted his teeth, glad Aaron was sitting on his lap as he had the urge to go to her and shake her.

"Bella—"

"We've been over this," she snapped. "This was always the plan. You go your way. I go mine. We have everything we need. It's time."

"You're injured."

She laughed, the sound somewhat bitter. "I've been injured before. My leg will heal. It's not broken."

"You and I both know you don't want to go at it alone anymore."

She glared at him, eyes flashing. "Why? Because of something I said when I was barely conscious?" She shook her head. "Nothing's changed."

"There's safety in numbers. If you'd been alone when that bear came, you would have been dead."

"If I hadn't stepped in the snare I had no reason to think was there, the snare that you set, I wouldn't have been in trouble. I would have seen the bear coming. If I had been alone up here like I was supposed to be, I'd have been fine."

Edward winced. She had a point. "But you—"

"Why do you care? Why does it matter so much to you that I don't want to go with you?"

"Because I… I…" He furrowed his brow. Why did he care so much?

He huffed out a breath and tried again. "Because that's what we're supposed to do. Care. I get why you think you can't trust anyone, Bella. I get why you think you're better off alone. I get that you can't just walk into a compound or up to a group of strangers and expect it'll turn out okay. But that isn't what happened here. You already know me. We're friends, aren't we?"

"I stabbed you."

"And I trapped you in a snare, remember?"

She scoffed and shook her head, turning back to what she'd been doing—filling their packs with supplies. "We're not friends. I took care of you because it was my responsibility."

"And I took care of you because that's what you do. You're supposed to take care of one another." He bounced the restless baby on his knee. "You don't have to watch your back every second of every day if you have good people with you."

She was quiet, and he sighed. "You still don't think I'm good people."

For long beats, she said nothing. Then she swallowed hard and looked up at him, that same vulnerability he'd seen briefly flashing through her eyes as she met his gaze. "I think when the world goes crazy, even good people do bad things."

"I think you're right. I know you're right. But the world went crazy years ago. If I was going to change who I am, become a rapist or whatever else you're worried about, I would have done it already." He shifted the baby as he stood and stepped closer to her. "You want an honest answer? We know about each other now, and we can help each other. Isn't that the definition of humanity? I don't want to live the rest of my life wondering if you survived this."

"That…" She took a steadying breath as though calming down, and didn't look at him. "That sounds like your problem."

He bounced the baby on his hip. "Would it be different if he wasn't here?" He nodded at Aaron.

She scoffed. "I think _you_ probably won't make it back to your family because he's here." She shook her head. "It's not his fault he's even less equipped to survive than you are. That's why you want me to come with you, right? You said it yourself. You weren't the survivalist of your little party."

He chafed. "I wasn't doing too badly before we met."

Her eyes drifted to his hand where he'd burned himself, but she said nothing.

"I think I can survive long enough to get back home," he said firmly. "And that's what I'm offering you. A home."

"Pass."

"You can be a part of a community that's moving everyone forward. Toward a new normal. You can—"

"Pass." The word came out harsher now, and she stared hard at him. "Imagine that. A man who doesn't want to take no for an answer. Who thinks his is the only way that'll work."

They glared at each other, words poised on the tip of Edward's tongue.

Then, his shoulders slumped and he took a step backward, away from her, nodding. "You're right. Who am I to assume I know what's best for you? You can make your own choices."

She said nothing but returned to her task.

"For what it's worth?" he said after a few minutes. "The offer stands. You know where I live. Where my family is. The door is always open if you want to come in."

 **A/N: Oh, Bella, Bella, Bella.**


	9. Chapter 9

**A/N: So, so, SO sorry for the delay between chapters. It took me a hot minute to work through some pacing issues I had. As a result, this chap is shorter than I planned, but, well...let's get to it.**

* * *

Whenever she passed through a town, Bella was in the habit of ducking through an abandoned building or two. Even two years out, with compounds beginning to organize supply-gathering missions, it was impossible that each and every building had been ransacked. Bella was always careful, mindful of the signs of human activity, but she found these tiny rural towns were too full of resources to ignore. People had gravitated toward the larger cities after everything started crashing.

Outside the main gates of Yellowstone National Park, there was a tiny town. Bella still remembered what it had been like before—the sidewalks packed with tourists, the shops and restaurants beckoning people to stop. As Bella emerged from the treeline, her eyes darting left and right to catch any hint of movement, the silence of the little town was deafening.

For a few minutes, Bella just walked, taking it all in. Her heart ached as a memory of her father hit her. In the early days, when they first set off to get away from Forks, it had felt so wrong to duck into a shop or someone's home. It still felt like stealing. Survival, Charlie had said, was everything. It was a new world, and these weren't homes. They were resources, and nature would reclaim them soon enough.

He'd been right. Even on the main drag—mostly asphalt, stone, and wood—plants were beginning to take over. Quick-growing bushes and vines climbed windows and fences. The cracks in the road, now that cars weren't a constant presence, overflowed with green.

"Earth will take back what's hers," Charlie had said.

Still uncomfortable on the main strip, Bella ducked down a side street, then another until she came to a neighborhood. She readjusted her packs, looking at each house as she passed. She wandered at random until one of the homes called to her, and then stepped carefully into the overgrown lawn.

A chill went down her spine.

She'd once read a short story by Ray Bradbury. _There Will Come Soft Rains_. It was about an automated house that had carried on with everyday life—making breakfast, setting out clothes. It had asked questions of its owners and waited for answers that never came. The house continued on, oblivious to the fact the shadows of the people who had lived there were burned onto the wall of the garage—victims of nuclear fallout.

The whole scene was eerie. Bella stepped into a house that looked lived in. There was an umbrella in a rack just inside the door, and rainboots all in a row. There were pictures on the walls—a family of four, it seemed. She tried not to look at them as she ascended the stairs.

The master bedroom, like the rest of the house, was bathed in a strange darkness—what was left of the light when it filtered through blinds and windows coated with grime. The room was musty. Bella crossed and eased the window open, careful not to make any noise. She peered carefully out, scanning everything in eyesight.

Nothing but trees.

Satisfied she was alone, Bella turned and let out a strangled yelp. The sight that greeted her startled her. Paranoia spiked in her, and she cocked an ear, listening for signs of life in the house.

Laid out on the bed, the sequins of the bodice sparkling in the strong afternoon light, was a fancy, deep blue dress. At a glance, it looked as though the owner had just set it down and gone to take a shower, getting ready for a night out.

On second glance, Bella saw the yellow tinge to the bed's comforter. This scene had gone unchanged for years. The virus struck before the house's owner could get where they were supposed to go. Their night out doubtlessly forgotten as someone in the house fell desperately ill.

"Still life of a night interrupted," Bella muttered. She sat on the bed gingerly, fingering the silky fabric of the dress. A glance up and she spotted its mate—a tux hung on the closet door.

Bella closed her eyes tightly against the automatic vision the sight brought. A couple, getting ready together. Maybe waiting for the babysitter. And then, disaster.

She shook her head, willing the vision away and swallowing hard against the lump in her throat. She let her thoughts drift down a different path. The dress was deep blue. While she'd never been one to dress up willingly, she knew that color went well with her hair and skin. She imagined what the dress would feel like sliding on, swishing against her ankles. An old cliche from the movies came to her, and in her inane little fantasy, she lifted a necklace to her neck.

"A little help?"

In her imagination, Edward—clean shaven and stunning in the black tux—strode toward her. He smiled, taking the necklace from her hand. She lifted her hair, and shivered at the brush of his fingertips against her skin.

She blinked, knocked breathless by the rush of want that went through her.

She missed Edward. She'd ignored the terrible twist in her heart when she walked away from him the day before. She'd forced her feet to keep moving, reminding herself all the reasons she was safer alone. She'd been irritated to find her internal checklist was already used to including him and baby Aaron. She'd found herself making plans for dinner for two and a half rather than just herself.

And now this. The fantasy had come on her unbidden, and there was nothing she could do to stem the intensity of the emotion that crashed over her then. She ached for him; there wasn't a damn thing she could do to prevent it or deny it.

Bella dug the heels of her palms into her eyes, breathing deeply, trying to rub away the wet sting in her eyes.

The fantasy was bullshit anyway. In what reality would she have worn a dress of her own volition, let alone a fancy one like this one that would have required heels? When she was in high school, people told her she would regret not going to prom, but she never had. Whoever she would have been had she been allowed to grow up in the world of before, the likelihood she would have ever worn a dress like this had to be close to zero. And Edward…

Well. It was inevitable, right? Only to be expected. She was a straight female. He was the only person she'd been in close proximity to in two years. Of course her psyche used him to fill in the blanks in her idle little fantasy. It had nothing to do with him as a person. There was nothing more to it than the fact he was literally one of two people in the entire world she had even a little bit of trust in, the other being her mother, if she was even still alive.

Letting out a shaky breath, Bella let her hand drop onto the cool fabric of the dress, changing the subject in her head. She wondered if there would be a reason for anyone to wear something so fine again in her lifetime. She knew humanity as a whole would get back there—to a place where people danced and wore clothes with no other function than to look pretty. Slinky dresses. Tuxes. Bowties. Jewels. Who needed any of that now?

Shaking her head, Bella stood and walked to the closet. Unlike slinky dresses, jeans were very much in demand, at least by her. Bella picked up a fresh pair whenever she could get her hands on one. She rifled through the closet, rolling her eyes at the jeans with fashionable wear and tear holes. She thought again of her theory—why this had happened to them as a species. That a group of renegade scientists had engineered this virus to save the world. Humans were, among other things, incredibly wasteful.

But, to the ex-owner's credit, she did find a few almost-new, very practical boot cut jeans.

It occupied a solid two hours—setting out all the clothes she carried and comparing what was available in this closet. She replaced two sets of jeans and several pairs of socks from the man's side, his socks being thicker. By some miracle, she also found brand new hiking boots just half a size larger than her own size.

As afternoon wore into evening, she made her way downstairs. She put together a rare treat of a meal—the equivalent of a steak and lobster dinner by nomadic standards. While it would be impractical to bring more than a can or two of food with her, she always made sure to have a good meal when she found an actual pantry. That night, she feasted on a meal of white rice, peas, carrots, green beans, and spam. She'd even found a bottle of soy sauce to season it all.

She ate in the comfort of the musty living room, her legs stretched out over the couch. After a few minutes, she began to curse her choice of dining room. From where she was, it was impossible not to see things she didn't want to think about. The brightly colored playmat that covered most of the floor, each square with numbers, letters, or shapes; the toybox in the corner and the scattered toys around it. She tried not to think about what might have happened to the child who'd once played here.

Aaron would love the toys here. The bright colors. The smiling faces of the stuffed animals. If he was still with her, maybe she would pick out a toy or two that weren't too cumbersome. The child these had once belonged to couldn't enjoy them anymore, but Aaron still could. She picked up a unicorn and grinned when she realized it was one of those that looked precious at first but when squeezed bared awful, malicious-looking teeth.

There were toys on Edward's island compound. Aaron would be happy there if they made it. And maybe they would. If they were lucky. If Edward kept his guard up. They weren't so far from the Washington coast.

Bella stirred her food around and around in the fancy bowl she'd found.

"You can be a part of a real, functioning society again," Edward had said. "This nomadic lifestyle is all survival. Always working. You could breathe again if you were with us."

Such a pretty picture he painted. And what a weird thought. The idea she'd be a homeowner at twenty-four in this new society where money was meaningless… That she could choose who she wanted to be, the job she wanted to have.

She could be a part of a whole.

Of course, she had been that in Forks too, and look how that turned out. Boys would be boys, and what little justice there was had been sacrificed to the virus.

A sense of profound loneliness came over her like a lead blanket coating every inch of her skin. God damn Edward Cullen for reminding her what it was like to actually want to be around another person. After her father died, everyone left in the world became suspect. Her paranoia had kept her alive this far.

But it couldn't last forever. She knew that. Hadn't she told Edward as much? When he asked how life could be worth living if she was going to spend the next seventy years alone, always scared?

It had to end sometime. She had to find a society to belong to.

But was that time now?

* * *

 **A/N: Thanks for your patience, guys!**

 **And to my recent anon who laments that I have a child and four WIPs… Life can happen to authors even who don't have children. :) Don't worry. I'll get it done. Just might take a little time.**


	10. Chapter 10

**A/N: Hey, look! I'm back.**

 **Thank you for your continued patience!**

* * *

The path Bella had marked for them kept them on the high road where it would be easiest to see what was going on below. The trail could be rougher, but it was smooth enough for a strong young man to make good daily progress even with a baby strapped to his chest.

It had to be exhausting thinking the way she did, planning for every eventuality. Even now, years into their new world, Edward was tempted to call her the wrong kind of paranoid; unreasonable. Dangerous, even. Hadn't her over-analyzation almost gotten both Aaron and himself killed?

But, she wasn't wrong. Not really. As much as Edward wanted to believe this new world was at least as safe as it had ever been, he knew almost better than she did how truly lawless and wild things were. Being part of a stationary compound, they'd had the benefit of collecting something akin to data. From the travelers who'd come near enough to the island to talk to as well as the expeditions like the one Edward had been on, they'd been able to determine a huge percent of the population who had survived the virus had died as a result of the ensuing violence. It was most of the reason —why technology had been pushed back to the Stone Age. Whoever had the potential to control things like electricity had a great deal of power. Power plants, dams, water supply—they were all hubs of death and destruction.

Edward was self-aware enough to recognize his privilege kept him from truly understanding what it was like to be so afraid. He had no uterus, so no one would ever target him as being a valuable commodity. His compound was well protected and run by good, honest people. The violence he knew was out there had never touched him personally.

She hadn't been wrong about Aaron either.

Travel with a toddler was a challenge. He was heavy, generating heat that left a big patch of sweat against Edward's front. He wiggled and whined when he wasn't content with being in his carrier. He was loud. He couldn't be left alone, and that stymied Edward's ability to hunt, fish, and gather food.

Four days out of Yellowstone, vulnerability and paranoia were already beginning to creep around the edges of Edward's psyche.

From his vantage point he'd spotted a small group of people traveling together. Though he was well above them and some distance away, his heart sped. He continued walking, thinking over his options. Finally, he decided it wouldn't hurt to stop long enough to collect as much information as he could.

Edward knelt, palm flat on the rock slab. He'd been right. There was a decent view from here. He leaned forward, one hand on the ground as he peered over the ledge into the distance.

Beneath him, Aaron crawled between his arms and legs, babbling to himself. Edward chanced a glance down. Aaron peered up at him, grinning winningly. "Hi," he said cheerfully.

Edward grinned, relaxing in spite of himself. He straightened up, bringing the baby with him as he settled with his back against the rock. "Hey, buddy. You want to hear a story from days long gone?"

Aaron tilted his head to the side as though perplexed. Taking that as agreement, Edward began his tale. "There was a game we used to play called Ye Olde Oregon Trail." He snickered at himself. "Basically a bunch of people traveling to Oregon, which isn't that far from where we're headed. They had some different challenges than we do. We don't have any of those oxen, for one thing. Don't have to worry about fixing wagon wheels."

He nodded in the direction of the strangers he'd been watching. "This was one of the things that could happen. You come across some strangers in the distance. What do you do? Approach them slowly? Wait and see what they do?"

The sound of a gun cocking near his ear sent ice down his spine, a stone sinking in his gut. "Or drop your guard so the strangers have an easy time gutting you," said a menacing voice.

"Mama!" Aaron exclaimed, wiggling out from under Edward and crawling in the direction of the voice.

Edward swung around. Sure enough, Bella stood behind him, her father's gun pointed skyward and her face set in a hard expression. "You're too damn easy to sneak up on."

He got to his feet and pointed a finger in her face as she reholstered her weapon. "Are you out of your goddamn mind? You almost gave me a heart attack." His heart was still pounding, and his skin was covered with a clammy sheen of sweat. "And what the hell are you pointing that damn thing at me for?"

"I didn't point it at you."

"That's how people get killed. Jesus Christ, I thought you didn't even like guns."

"Would you lower your voice?" she hissed. "I hate guns. I've always hated guns. You weren't going to die. I took the bullet out. If anyone is going to get anyone killed, it's you. You're not paying attention, and now you're screaming at the top of your lungs."

"Don't be dramatic."

"Dramatic." She shook her head. "You don't take your safety seriously. You don't take his safety seriously." She pointed at Aaron who sat between them looking up, his fingers in his mouth.

"I wasn't yelling, and I was trying to figure out if those strangers were a threat. How is that not taking our safety seriously?"

"You—"

"Stop it. Fine. I can admit I'm not capable of splitting my attention in five different directions at once. You aren't either. I snuck up on you once."

"I was able to defend myself."

He rolled his eyes. "So, what? You wanted me to stab you?"

"You would have seen it was me before you stabbed me, but you should have been ready to."

Edward surged forward. In one quick movement, he had had her pinned up against the rockface, an arm thrown up across her chest. He had his dagger in his hand, the blade at her neck and his nose a fraction of an inch from hers. Her startled puff of breath was hot on his face.

"Is this what you want?" he demanded, his voice pitched low and gravelly. "You want to see what I can do?"

Several seconds ticked by in a breathless space. Though he'd been the one to grab her, he was shocked to find her so close. He had no business touching her like this, not for any reason, yet he didn't let her go. Her eyes were wide, frozen like he seemed to be. They stared at each other.

A high pitched giggle at their feet sent them moving again. Aaron seemed to have decided they were playing. He'd hauled himself to his feet and barreled into Edward's legs, wanting in on the game. Bella sucked in a breath and shoved Edward backward. "Get off me."

Edward stooped, gathering Aaron into his arms and giving Bella space. He swallowed hard. He knew he needed to apologize. She was aggravating, but manhandling her was inexcusable, particularly given that he knew what she'd been through. He should never have touched her, but he couldn't get his tongue to work right to say so. His pulse raced too fast. He was dizzy, he realized. Just a little off center.

"You were too easy to find," she muttered.

The fog was beginning to clear from Edward's head. It occurred to him that Bella was there. Bella who had sworn she was going in the opposite direction. Bella who had released him to care for himself without her help. Bella who had sworn he and Aaron would be out of sight, out of mind. She was in front of him, shaking her head as she gathered her packs from where she'd put them down when she attacked him.

And wasn't that interesting?

"You were the one who marked my path, Bella," he said, calm now. "Of course you found me. You knew where I was going to be."

There was silence again as she shouldered her bags. Then, "You're not traveling fast enough. You should have covered at least another five miles by now."

"We have time to get where we need to be."

"No, we…You don't. Don't you see by now? The baby is less of a liability to you, but he's still dangerous. You need to get home as soon as possible."

He pressed his tongue against the roof of his mouth, fighting a smile. It wasn't funny. He knew it wasn't funny. He couldn't imagine what it had taken for her to abandon her plan to come after him. He knew what a risk she was taking.

Curiosity screamed in his head, but he swallowed it down. He wasn't going to ask questions, and he wasn't going to rub her face in it. "You can set the pace if you want to," he offered, his voice soft and unassuming. As though she'd been traveling with them all along and hadn't just appeared out of nowhere. As though he had never feared she would disappear out of his life forever.

She didn't say anything at first, fiddling with the ties of her main backpack. That alone was telling. Her hands were usually swift and sure. Now, her fingers shook, and it took her several tries to tighten the strap.

Aaron pitched forward in his arms, reaching for her. "Mama."

Bella took a deep breath and let it out, lifting her eyes at least to Aaron's. She managed a small smile for the boy and reached out to touch his hair briefly. "Bella," she said."My name is Bella."

"Mama." Aaron made an insistent noise, swinging his hands at her.

She sighed and took him into her arms, hugging him close. She closed her eyes tightly and breathed him in.

If Edward didn't know better, he'd have sworn she was trying not to cry.

When she opened her eyes, her look was resolved. "Let's go."

 _ **~0~**_

It was almost the end of the day before Bella offered any explanation whatsoever.

They were walking along, everyone quiet. Aaron slept peacefully against Edward's chest.

"When I found Aaron, what I decided made sense," she said when she slowed down enough so they were walking side by side.

A jolt of shock went down Edward's spine. He stumbled but corrected almost instantly. He cleared his throat. "What?"

"What I was going to do." She stared straight forward, her voice toneless. "It made sense when it was just me. And it wasn't just about me. What I needed to survive. If it was just about me and what I needed, I would have left him there with his parents. The most I could give him was an easy death—no pain, no fear. Full belly. It was all I could do. I do have humanity left, and it was the humane thing."

"I know that, Bella," he said quietly, putting a hand to Aaron's hair.

She paused a few more beats before she spoke again. "I think you were right. You do have a good chance of surviving. If I were you, since you could risk getting near one of the closer compounds, I would have left him there. He would have been taken care of." As she spoke, her words got faster, tripping into a full-on ramble. "But since you insist on taking him to your island… It just changes things. I saved him. I'm the reason he didn't die with his parents. I wanted to do everything I could. With you in the equation, everything I can do includes helping you get home. You know, since you suck at surviving on your own. It's the right thing to do."

He gave an exasperated sigh but bit his tongue before he could argue. Her insistence that he was incapable of surviving on his own grated. He sensed, though, that this was the story she was telling herself—the reason it was okay to risk everything. Despite her words, she was putting her trust in him, that he wouldn't hurt her, and that his people wouldn't hurt her.

"It'll make things easier," he said, keeping his tone light. "It's hard to do everything with a baby underfoot as just one person. This way one of us can keep an eye on him while the other does what needs to be done."

"Sure." Leaves crunched on the forest floor beneath her feet. "You get babysitting duty."

He glanced to the side, his eyes narrowed at her. "You know, I'm decent at hunting."

"If you're as good at hunting as you are at snares, one of us is going to end up with a bullet or a spear through the heart."

 _ **~0~**_

Raspberries, Edward decided, were amazing.

Two days into their journey together, they'd cut through a neighborhood in yet another tiny, deserted town. In the backyard of one of the houses they ducked into, they'd found an overgrown fruit and vegetable garden. It was such a feast, Bella had been convinced it was okay to spend an afternoon lolling on the back porch out of the warm sunshine. They watched, each stretched out on lounging sofas, as Aaron toddled through the garden.

Well. Bella watched the little boy. Edward had to admit he was highly distracted.

Raspberries.

He'd never thought much about them. He thought back but couldn't remember if he'd ever bought a carton or had reason to eat them by themselves.

Now, though, he had a newfound appreciation for the fruit. Or rather, if he was being honest, how Bella was choosing to eat it.

She had one berry pressed to her lip, just resting there, her tongue occasionally darting out to lick. Now and then she would close her eyes and sigh, the soft sound sending a thrill down his back every time it reached his ears. She was savoring the sweet, tart flavor or else she was distracted, deep in thought—obviously oblivious to his eyes on her.

He pushed his tongue into the divot at the fruit's center, teeth and tongue pressing into lush skin, teasing juice out from beneath the surface. The berry was still warm from the sun, and that didn't help the tone of his thoughts. He licked along the inside, feeling each of the tiny ridges and imagining…

Well.

He was glad she couldn't read his mind.

"The world got bigger again."

He heard the word bigger and not much else at first. He sat upright, shifting his legs, guilty and…

"What?" he asked, blinking hard.

She turned to look at him, resting a head on her palm. "You know how people used to say the world was getting smaller and smaller? Because of the internet, cameras watching you everywhere you go." A wistful smile played at the corner of her lips. "I had friends in so many countries. People I'd never met who I talked to almost every day. Everyone is just… gone. Totally inaccessible to me."

Edward lay back on the couch staring up at the cloudless blue sky and the vibrant evergreens around them. "I get that. Feeling how big the world actually is, I mean." His heart ached and he rubbed a spot on his chest. "It swallowed my sister. If she's alive, she's on the same continent, but she may as well be on Mars." He shook his head. "We're all off the grid now."

"You want to hear something weird?" she asked.

"Sure."

"Even though it's been years without so much as a lightbulb, I still had to stop myself from asking if you wanted to Facebook. When we left Yellowstone, I mean."

His lips quirked. "I get that. I told you before we left. It felt wrong—that I would never know what happened to you. All these lost people. It felt so wrong to let you get swallowed up by the world once I'd found you."

She was quiet for a moment, but then she scoffed. "Not all those who wander are lost," she quoted Tolkien.

"I didn't mean it that way," he said. "Like you needed to be brought in from the wilderness." Though he thought she did. It was still a choice she needed to make for herself.

"I'm not staying, you know."

"I know." He tapped his finger against the couch. "You can, though."

"I know."

Silence fell between them again. There was no noise but the light breeze through the trees until Aaron giggled—the sound sweet, free, and high-pitched—as he chased after a butterfly. Bella tensed, sitting up to scan the treeline. Edward smiled, sad but strangely charmed.

"I will be your Facebook friend though," he said.

She looked at him, brows furrowed. "What?"

"I'll add you to Facebook. When I can."

Her expression turned bemused. "Okay. Sure."

He sat up again and tilted his head, ignoring the impulse to reach across and take her hand. "The world will shrink again, Bella. I know all this, living off the land with whatever we can get our hands on is hard, but it's not forever. We're never going to start from scratch. Technology still exists. Everything will get turned back on. So, I'm making you a promise. When we get electricity, the internet… When I find another computer, and when Zuckerberg 2.0 gets their act together, the first thing I'm going to do is send you a friend request."

She stared at him a beat and then laughed. It was a loud laugh, and she clapped a hand over her mouth. She shook her head, but smiled at him. "Yeah, okay. Me too. When the world comes back online, I'll accept your friend request."

* * *

 **A/N: See you soon, my ducks.**


	11. Chapter 11

**A/N: As per usual, thank you for being patient with me! Writing is my passion, and I'll never give it up. I'm learning balance slowly but surely!**

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"It's starting to rain," Edward said.

Bella glanced over her shoulder at him and raised an eyebrow. "So?"

"So…maybe we should stop."

"Why?"

"Because…the baby?"

"Is he made of sugar?"

Edward made an exasperated noise. "Don't you hear the way he's whimpering? He's about to start crying any second."

"Yeah. He does that a lot. It's not exactly a surprise." She flexed her fists around the straps of her pack, trying not to let her frustration get the better of her. She'd signed on for this, she reminded herself. No one had made her come back for them.

"You make it sound like he can help it. He's just a baby. It's not his fault."

That made Bella stop short so she could glare at Edward. "I know it's not his fault. I know he's not doing it on purpose. He cries. He screeches. He laughs. He's loud. The fact it's not his fault will mean jack shit to you when you're dead."

"Are we back to this?" He shook his head.

"You brought it up, Edward. My story has never changed. It's not going to change. He's dangerous to all of us. You don't get it because, of all of us, you're in the least danger. You could have used that fact to benefit everyone. You could have gone to the closest compound, but you want to go to yours. Understandable, but it's still a numbers game. The longer we're out here, the more likely he gets us killed. It's as simple as that, and I wish I didn't have to repeat it so often." She readjusted her bags on her shoulders. "We keep moving."

They kept moving.

He was brooding. She didn't have to look at him to know it. She knew too well the set of his clenched jaw and furrowed brow. She gnashed her teeth, frustrated. He wasn't the only one who could get a good brood on. She stared straight forward, fairly certain if she had to see the look of disapproval on his face she was going to punch him.

To say they'd had some difficulties adjusting to life on the road together would be putting it mildly. She and her father had worked like a well-oiled machine when they were on foot. Charlie understood the realities of their world and the constant vigilance it took to survive. And even that hadn't been enough to keep him alive.

Edward was oblivious. She couldn't get it through his thick skull that their lives actually were in danger. He thought she was too cold, too serious, and far too rigid with all her rules.

They were on each other's last nerve and today, with the rain falling, everything was just...worse.

It didn't help that, despite Edward thinking she was soulless, Aaron's pitiful crying tugged at her heartstrings. She tried not to look at him. Inevitably, though, they made eye contact. His lower lip trembled and he reached for her. "Mama."

Still walking, Bella pressed a palm between her eyes. "I'm not your mother," she said between clenched teeth.

Edward made a disgruntled noise. She scowled, already exasperated. "What's your problem now?" she asked though she already knew she wasn't going to like the answer.

"You don't even see a baby, do you? A human being. You see a threat that needs to be dealt with and discarded one way or another."

For the second time, she stopped and stared at him. Part of her recognized that he, like the baby, was just moody.

Most of her didn't care about rationality at that particular moment.

"Seriously? Because I told him I'm not his mother? First of all, it's true. I'm not. Secondly, you know he doesn't understand English, right?"

"Babies understand intent. They understand a lot. It doesn't cost you anything to give him that much comfort. If you'd stop to think of him as a human being-"

"Oh, shut. Up, Edward. I don't want to be his mother. It's not like he understands I want him to stop anyway. And I'm not treating him any differently than I'm treating you. I'm also not your mother, and I'm making you walk in the rain when you don't want to.

"And anyway, have you looked around you?" She swept an arm out at the wilderness around them. "You want to stop and what? There's no damn shelter."

They glared at each other for a few seconds—the relentless tempo of the rain and the baby's cries adding to the atmosphere of misery and fury. Then, Edward let out a long breath, wiping water off his face in a totally useless gesture. He gave a huff of laughter.

"What if there was shelter?" he asked.

She blinked, momentarily confused by the lack of hostility in the air. "What?"

"If we found shelter. A cave or something."

"There are no caves out here."

He rolled his eyes but there was a smile playing at his lips. "Humor me, you complete hard ass. Let me believe there's some hope."

She stared at him another beat, still behind on the emotional climate and not sure yet that she wanted to roll with the change. Her lip twitched. "Okay, sure. Fine. If we happen upon a random shelter, we'll stop."

His grin was startling. She blinked but could only laugh. "Let's go," she said.

He was a new man. He whistled as they walked, distracting the baby who giggled as he tried to imitate the sound.

Bella closed her eyes briefly as they walked forward, breathing in the petrichor, enjoying the rain, if only for a moment.

The moment passed and all she could feel was the weight of her packs, the uncomfortable chafe of wet jeans on skin. She set her jaw and carried on.

Fifteen minutes later, she stopped short.

There, in a clearing not far below them, was a cabin. She blinked at it.

"Oh look. Shelter," Edward deadpanned, utterly unsurprised.

"You knew this was here," she accused.

He smirked and shrugged. "I saw it a little while ago when we were further away. I didn't know if we were traveling in the right direction, but then I saw it again through the trees." His grin widened. "How's that for being aware of your surroundings?"

She bit the inside of her cheek, part irritated, part amused. She brushed wet hair out of her eyes.

"Come on." Edward reached out, briefly touching her arm. "The rain is only making our packs heavier. That's going to slow us down anyway. It makes sense." He paused a beat, studying her face. "Don't you remember that part of Oregon Trail? Sometimes, the right choice is to rest and wait and see if conditions improve."

She rolled her eyes and sighed. "Basing our decisions on video games? That sounds like a good way to survive."

"Hey, The Oregon Trail was based on facts. People did wait for conditions to improve sometimes." He tilted his head toward her, his voice low and gentle. "It's the right choice for our wagon train, captain."

She huffed. She did appreciate that he was willing to be led. He was free to stomp off to the cabin without her permission, thus negating the whole reason she'd come back for him. The likelihood was that stopping for the day wouldn't hurt in the long run.

"Fine." She gestured for him to move in the direction of the cabin.

They were, as ever, cautious. Bella scouted ahead, creeping through the trees, closer and closer until she could determine that the cabin was indeed abandoned.

"All clear," she said, getting back to where Edward and Aaron were waiting. "But if this was a serial killer's cabin, that's on you."

But the cabin proved to be exceedingly normal. Like every other building she'd encountered in their new world, a musty, stale smell permeated the air. Aside from that, the cabin was like something out of a cheesy Christmas movie—city girl with a high powered job finds herself out in the desolate mountains for one reason or another. The decorations were tastefully rustic. The living room was large and open—sofas set up as though just waiting for guests to gather around the fire.

There was always an obscenely attractive man in those movies. One who knew a thing or two about something stereotypically manly. Or was an undercover prince.

Or had a cute kid.

Bella tried not to pay attention as they carefully explored the bottom floor of the house. Edward dropped his packs at the door and pulled Aaron out of his carrying sack. He murmured softly to the whimpering boy, telling him it was okay now and they'd be warm and dry soon.

"I'm going to check upstairs," Bella said, needing some distance to recenter. She was distracted again, and she needed her wits about her.

She breathed deep despite the mildew and dust smell of the abandoned house. This man got under her skin. He took so much attention, both because he was just one more person she had to look out for and because he got under her skin more than she wanted to admit.

It shouldn't matter, but it had hit her hard that, deep down, he saw her as cold and heartless.

She did her best not to think about it as she headed up the stairs, keeping a hand on the knife tucked at her side. The home smelled too musty, too dusty and unused, to have someone living in it, but one could never be too careful. Besides, there was something odd in the air; something worse than stale that she couldn't quite put her finger on.

It was extravagant for a cabin in the middle of nowhere. Her Yellowstone cabin had been more normal as these things went-one room with all the necessities. This one had a small living space downstairs and a kitchen. Upstairs were two bedrooms, one with bunk beds, and a bathroom of all things.

Hoping beyond hope, Bella tried the tap. Of course, nothing happened. The home, she had noticed, had electric sockets and switches. There was some kind of system-probably solar based. Given time, she might have even been able to get it to work, though not on a day like today.

Running a reverent hand over a dusty set of bath salts, she had a brief day dream about a long, hot bath. Or a shower. She wasn't that picky.

The closet held a small assortment of men and womens clothes. She quickly shed her wet things, finding a pair of jeans, a red flannel shirt. It was a shapeless outfit on her figure but dry.

As she ran her fingers through her hair, trying to smooth the tangles, she tilted her head up. It took a minute to figure out what she was looking at. A rope hung down from the ceiling. A rope set in a square that was different from the rest of the ceiling.

An attic.

Bella got up on the room's bed and reached up, satisfied when a ladder came sliding down. She climbed up, mostly curious. There was little chance anyone would be hiding up here.

She was wrong.

Breath left her in a long gust as her eyes adjusted to the darkness of the room. There was only one window and it was storming outside. The small attic space had been transformed into a cozy office. But the comfy desk chair wasn't tucked under a simple desk. It was toppled over.

The skeletal remains of a human body were still scattered on top of it.

Her hand trembled as she shone the flashlight she'd brought up with her on the eerie scene.

This person hadn't died of the sickness. The chair and the floor were still stained dark from the pool of blood that had once gathered there, rivulets flowing into the floorboards. Jeans and a plain green sweatshirt lay rumpled, mimicking a human shape.

There was a gun near what had been its hand.

Bella squatted, suddenly weak in the knees. She pressed the back of her hand against her mouth, breathing as shallowly as she could. That was the smell she hadn't been able to identify before: death gone stale.

Had she—and Bella felt somehow it was a woman—come out here to her isolated cabin to escape the illness? Some distance away was a cellphone lying haphazardly on the floor. Had she been holding it when she pulled the trigger? Looking at pictures of a life now destroyed? Were whomever had occupied those bunk beds lost to her?

Was it the loss that had gotten to her or the profound loneliness?

Bella crouched there for minutes, her mind blank. Weight seemed to press down on her chest. The quiet ache that lived in her heart got loud, pounding between her ears so she knew nothing else.

It took her awhile to recognize there was an odd noise drifting up from the bottom of the cabin. Musical notes?

Bella stood up. Her mind had reverted back to the perfunctory space it usually was. She looked at the room with a critical eye and walked to where the corpse was. She picked up the gun with ginger fingers and clicked the safety into place. She picked up a box of bullets from the desk.

She shuddered as she put the bullets in her pocket. She hated guns.

Numb, she made her way back downstairs. She was greeted by an almost idyllic sight. The downstairs rooms were lit by the warm glow of a fire. Edward sat behind a small, upright piano by one window, playing what, to her, sounded like random notes. Aaron stood, his hands on the piano bench as he grinned up at Edward.

As Bella walked slowly toward the inviting room, the random notes Edward played morphed into a definite melody. It was haunting and familiar, but she didn't recognize the Tears for Fears song until he began to sing in a low, lovely voice.

Mad World.

Well, no kidding.

She sighed and went to sit on the couch to listen. Delighted to see her, Aaron toddled over and tugged on her jeans. With another sigh, she lifted the boy onto her lap.

Edward brought the song to an end, the last note of the piano and his sweet voice lingering in the air. He looked to her and smiled gently. Her heart, gone cold in her chest, warmed just a little.

His look grew wistful. "I used to like the rain, you know?" He glanced outside. "There was something peaceful about it. A hot cup of tea, a cozy blanket, and the sound of rainfall. The roll of distant thunder." He chuckled and shrugged. "Rainy days used to be one of my favorite things."

"I've never liked the rain," Bella said. "Any cold, wet thing… I don't like it."

He ducked his head. "Then I guess that's just one more reason you don't want to stay on an island in the Pacific Northwest."

She scoffed. "Why would you want a monster like me there?"

He started, the smile on his face falling. "What?"

She opened her mouth, closed it. Opened it again. "You know… the Oregon Trail was a life and death struggle to most who traveled it."

He blinked, his brow furrowed.

She shook her head, frustrated with herself, but went on anyway. "They had to make decisions that no one who lived in a modern society would ever have to make. Things we would find heinous. Things they would have found heinous only a few months before. If someone got too sick but didn't have the courtesy to die fast enough, there might not have been room enough in the wagon. There might not have been enough time left to wait for conditions to improve." Those last words came out acerbic. She ducked her head looking away from him. "Some people were left by the side of the road, watching their families walk away. They were left to die alone, and their families were left to deal with the choice they made the rest of their lives."

She heard the scrape of the piano bench on the floor. "Bella—" Edward started.

"You think I'm cold and inhumane for what I could have done to Aaron."

He sat beside her, close but not touching. "I don't."

"You do."

"I was water-logged and miserable. I didn't mean it and I shouldn't have said it."

"Things come out when you're angry. Just because you shouldn't have said it doesn't mean you don't think it's true. You think, in my shoes, you would have made another choice."

"I think…" He grunted. "I think I can't imagine not at least trying. I think I would have done everything, anything I could. I think…" He shook his head. "It just never would have occurred to me to do that. That's all. It just never would have been an option."

She nodded, her throat tight. "Maybe you'll get to the other side of this without having to make a choice like that. I hope you do." She looked up into his eyes. "All of us are capable of atrocities, Edward. This is life or death. This is the apocalypse. I hope you'll never have to truly understand that, but if you ever do… Think of me."

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 **A/N: Happy holidays. I'll see you in the new year!**


	12. Chapter 12

**A/N: Hello, my beautiful ducks.**

 **Well. Are we still in the mood for a virus induced apocalypse? Lol.**

 **Thanks for waiting. You know it's taking me forever to update as it is, but when Covid hit… Well, I work doing intake for food stamps and medi-cal. We couldn't BREATHE for a couple of weeks.**

 **Things are calming down on the work front. I hope all is well and everyone is staying safe.**

* * *

Edward chuckled to himself, the sound breaking up the monotony of their footfalls crunching on dry pine needles.

"What?" Bella asked.

"Did I ever tell you I had an obsession with abandoned places?" He shook his head. "Obsession is the wrong word. An interest, I guess. I looked them up online, read about them, put a couple on my bucket list kind of thing."

"I always wanted to visit that abandoned Wizard of Oz theme park." She smirked at his raised eyebrow. "What? You think you were the only one with an Abandoned Places Pinterest board?"

He grinned. "They're all fascinating, but the one that got to me was this city in Japan that got abandoned after a tsunami knocked out the nuclear power plant. People were in the middle of their day when they left. There's a school with tiny backpacks still lined up. It was just a few years ago. That seemed impossible to me then."

As he spoke the words, they emerged from the tree line into a parking lot. An unpleasant chill went down his spine at the sight. Parked cars in a parking lot. It shouldn't have been such an eerie thing to see.

But they were abandoned cars. The world around them was still. Quiet.

Even now, it felt wrong.

"Abandoned theme parks were creepy when they were just pictures," Bella said, glancing around with her typical wary expression. She readjusted the pack that held the gently babbling Aaron. "Who would want to come here now that the whole world is abandoned?"

"Only we crazy people, I suppose." He glanced around then back at her and smiled. "Thanks for indulging me."

When he realized where Bella's carefully plotted map would take them, Edward was sure he'd never convince her to make a detour. He'd gone a full day hardly talking, plotting out every argument he could think of in his head. The words were barely out of his mouth before she agreed.

"Hope is important for survival too." She shifted Aaron and held him out to Edward who took the child. Unencumbered, Bella crouched low and then sprang into the air, grabbing a bar on top of the RV they were standing by. Legs kicking against the side, she scrambled up onto the roof.

Edward shook his head. "I could have done that if you'd asked."

"I got it," she said, not looking at him. She stayed low at first, ever cautious. Slowly, she stood up, using the added height to see across the lot for as little good as it would do. Even from her vantage point, she couldn't possibly see far through the trees. For his part, Edward tilted his head up and drew a deep breath through his nose. He smelled fresh air and damp baby. No fires nearby that might indicate people. It was getting to be solidly summer, but the north was cold.

He bounced the baby and watched Bella do her thing, waiting patiently as she surveyed the land. He was eager as he'd ever been to be out of the parking lot, across the street to the park.

Hope, Bella had said. Necessary.

Dangerous.

This kind of hope wasn't wise. The kind of hope that ballooned too big too fast and for no tangible reason. When it popped… man, was that going to be devastating. The fall might just kill him.

He swallowed a lump in his throat as he watched Bella slide off the top of the RV, her legs dangling for a moment before she dropped to the ground. "It's quiet out here. Normally, I'd think a theme park would be a hot spot." She nodded her head in the direction of the road. "But this is no Disneyland."

"Disneyland was set up to be its own city." Edward was irrationally relieved he got to use one of the arguments he'd prepared. "And it's surrounded by a metropolis of millions of people. I think this whole county has 150,000 people."

"And it's dead cold in the winter up here. Not many would set up permanent camp." Bella nodded and took Aaron back. "Go ahead. We'll meet you."

He nodded and swallowed thickly again. He took a deep breath, but before he could head off in the direction of the theme park, Bella stopped him with a hand in his arm. The touch sent a thrill through his body. He stared a beat at her hand, small and gentle on him. He looked up and found a rare expression of tenderness on her face. "It's a chance of a chance," she said quietly. "If there's nothing there, it doesn't mean anything."

It was exactly what he'd been telling himself. But more than needing to hear the words out loud, her familiar touch did wonders to quiet his raw nerves. For a moment he could imagine Bella was someone who genuinely cared about him; someone who cared for more than just survival reasons.

Her eyes were such a pretty brown.

Shaking that wayward thought off, Edward let her words ground him. "I know," he said.

With that, he set off, turning only once when Aaron called out to him in his baby babble. Edward waggled his fingers at the baby, promising he'd be back soon, and hurried down the path. He stopped at the highway, struck again by how much the world had changed. There was no sound but the wind. The only car in sight was one in the dead center of the road; abandoned where it should never have been able to stop.

Shaking that off, Edward continued across the street to the entrance of his theme park destination—Silverwood Theme Park, set just outside the town limits of tiny Athol, ID, North of Coure d'alone.

In a world without cell phones, without the internet or the US Postal Service, communication was all but impossible. People had resorted to something much more primitive.

As he traveled, first with his team and then with Bella, they had come across the occasional message. In private homes there were notes written on anything handy—notebooks, now-irrelevant mail, walls, counters. Personal notes fading to dust along with the remnants of the life they all knew before.

 _Amanda — I'm headed toward Mom._

 _Bae — Boys and I survived. Going to LA. Please be alive._

 _Meet me in Montauk._

Well-known landmarks often became low tech message boards. The entrance of Yellowstone, the National Park sign, was almost totally obscured by paper tacked on with anything and everything possible. The litter around it had been unreal. And that was the tiny spark of hope that had lit in Edward's chest. Surviving being lost had eclipsed his original mission. The idea has been to make it as far as Chicago; figure out what was going on in the wider world; bring back useful people.

 _His_ mission had been to try to find his sister.

When they were growing up, Edward's parents had made sure their children were well traveled. They'd hit the open road every spring break or summer. Hotels usually had a magazine rack covered with pamphlets advertising nearby adventures to be had. Always, when they were in this part of the country, the Cullen kids would beg to go to Silverwood Theme Park.

Who knew why it appealed to them so much. They'd been to much bigger, better parks. They'd been to Disneyworld. But somehow, Silverwood got stuck in their heads. Every time they happened to be in the general area, all three of them begged.

One year, for no particular reason Edward never understood, their pleading worked. His parents threw out their plans to keep on driving and drove to this tiny park, prepared for their children's' disappointment.

It didn't happen. There was just something about that day, some magic. It was no Disneyland but that meant no Disney crowds. There were roller coasters and a water park. That day, there'd been no squabbling between the Cullen children, no fights. It existed in their memory as a rare, perfect day they still spoke of.

So, Edward had hope. Hope that if his sister had passed through, she'd have thought to leave a message. And as he stepped closer to the main gates, his skin began to tingle in anticipation. It was that painful eagerness that made time slow down—like how the plane ride home after a long trip always seemed to pass by in years instead of minutes.

He needed this—the uncertainty about his sister's very existence—to end. Right then, he needed it almost as badly as he needed his next breath. He tried to keep his steps measured as he walked but dropped his packs as he covered the last few yards in a sprint. Bella would scold him for leaving his supplies, his protection, behind him before he knew if there was a danger, but he didn't care.

The entrance plaza was simple: a couple of house-shaped buildings and a row of turnstiles that stood useless now. The buildings were useless too, their windows broken, computers shattered on the ground. This place would have been popular with looters and long ago cleaned out.

But the walls were covered in writing.

The messages here looked different from the ones he'd seen in private homes. Like pages of a yearbook, there was writing in every direction, filling every space. Those who had come first had written in large, can't be missed letters. _Mom - Texas. Love, Kass and Dash_ splashed across one full side. The messages were written in every kind of ink he could imagine, and some kinds he didn't want to think about. Those who couldn't find ink had scratched messages into the wood, often obscuring the ink beneath it.

Edward began to read. As he did, he noticed a profusion of nicknames thrown into the messages there. It took him a moment to catch on. Of course. Common names would be meaningless in a place like this. In a private home, if you were looking for someone, you already knew who they were. Out here, who could tell one Tom, Dick, or Harry from another?

So he stopped scanning for Edwards, Emmetts, and Alices. He heard his sister's voice in his head as he tried to decide what she might write.

Eddard, Teeny-Tiny, Mom, Pops - Chicago sucks in the winter. Stopping in WA. Love Malice and Debutante.

He had to breathe slowly through the pain that radiated in his chest then. He'd have given anything to hear his sister's voice right then, to turn and see her mischievous smile. Malice indeed. He could almost feel the slight weight of her jumping on his back like he knew she would when they met again.

When. When. When.

"Please be here, Mally."

He scanned the messages. And scanned. And scanned. Dary. Enfie. Nif. Sebby. Jersey Scrub. Queen Theen. Eeka. Flower Point. Jeezy. Corky. Jennabootswiththefur. All sorts of nicknames along with plain Jane names sprinkled in.

Not a lot of Alices. No Jaspers.

As he got to the end of the line, heaviness had replaced the hope in his heart. His blood ran cold. He breathed as though through water. A strange sense came over him he had trouble placing.

When he was still a small child, his parents said the things all parents did. "Don't wander off. If someone takes you, we'd never ever see you again."

Like almost everything parents said, it all went in one ear and out the other. Edward lived in a world where he was safe. Loved. When he had wandered off in the past, one of his parents had always been able to find him, as if he'd never been lost at all. He had merely been distracted. His parents, his home, his happiness had always been there, never in any danger.

But that day, he noticed he was alone before his parents did. He swung around only to find everyone as far as he could see was a stranger.

Like all the other inane things parents said, their words didn't sink in. Not until, on one of their many trips, Edward looked up and his family was nowhere to be seen.

The panic had come on him slowly. As he searched, too afraid to call out lest he draw the attention of someone scary, dread began to pool in his belly. His parents' words came back to him, and his little brain had begun to think about what it would mean to never see his family, his home again.

He couldn't. He had no concept of anything but his own reality. It was, to him, an unknowable, black maw where nameless monsters lurked. Fear made his blood run cold and his body began to tremble. His heartbeat picked up, and his throat closed. Tears welled. He wanted his mommy. He _needed_ her. He _needed_ his daddy's strong arms. Desperation clawed at him. He needed all of them now: Mommy, Daddy, Emmy, Ally. All of them. He _needed_ them.

Second by second, his happy existence faded away—unreachable—and the desperation he felt made it hard to breathe. How. How. How? How was a world without his family possible? He would never smile again. Never be happy again. His entire life as he knew it was shattered into tiny pieces, impossible to put together again. There was nothing left but awful, awful, awful. This new reality screamed in his ear with every erratic beat of his heart.

Then, of course, his mother and father found him. The scooped him up, and held him tightly as he sobbed out his terror. And nothing changed. Life went back to normal as it always did.

Not this time.

For years now, he'd been successful in pushing away the impact of what had happened to his world. Everything, the way they lived now, was temporary. A set back. As he'd reminded Bella, all the technology of the world still existed. The world would regroup and reorganize. When everything had what they needed again—food, shelter, education, healthcare and on and on—life would return to what it had been.

And it wasn't as though he'd been oblivious to the utter devastation of life. Getting off the ship knowing there was no stopping death if it were to come for him had been one of the most terrifying things he'd ever experienced. And to watch his stoic sister-in-law slip away, leaving his brother and their tiny son behind? It was possibly the worst moment of his life.

But everything else he'd been able to compartmentalize. His home, where he'd lived before all this, would still be there. All his favorite places—favorite hangouts and restaurants—would still be there. There would be movies to go to and nightclubs to dance in again. There would be vacations. There would be normalcy.

Most of all, his friends, his sister—everyone he had no ability to see or contact still existed. He just had to wait. He just had to survive. This new, terrible world was temporary. It was all temporary. His old life was intact on the other side of the whole situation.

His sister had to still exist.

He was supposed to find her. Like his parents had found him that day he was lost. He would find her and the world wouldn't be so irrevocably broken. The world would go on as it had been.

Time passed with only the lonely sound of the breeze. He wandered aimlessly into the park. Just in case, some numb part of him thought. Though what would have been the point of hiding her message like some _Where's Waldo_ page? People had left messages along every ride. Favorites, it seemed. There was a shattered picture frame showing two grinning boys taken at this same ride in happier times. Edward flipped it over.

 _I miss you like crazy,_ was scrawled on the back. He had to close his eyes against the overwhelming ache in his hollow heart.

He moved on, passing dilapidated roller coasters and drop rides. The waterpark had been overtaken-the pools covered in leaves and algae, the chlorine long gone. Memories spoke to him from every turn. Emmett goading him into trying the waterslide though he was terrified. Alice grabbing his hand so tightly he screamed when they went down the rapid slide. Their father having to warn their mother if she didn't stop eating junk food, she would be sick.

Twilight had fallen over the park as he trudged to their agreed upon meeting place: the High Noon Saloon, tucked into the park's Main Street. He shuddered again, trying to shake off the eerie feeling of seeing a place like this-his brain still expected to see it crowded with people-empty, the windows shattered and no one around to care.

Edward's lip twitched as he took in yet another bizarre sight. Bella had started a small cooking fire in between the train tracks that ran in front of the main strip. He blinked and stared. Was that a...chicken on a makeshift spit?

He wouldn't put it past her.

Though it still felt like he was breathing through water, his lungs heavy in his chest, Edward had just a little more energy as he stepped onto the wooden walkway. Silverwood, as could be expected, was set up in an Old West style. If he was in a better mood, he might have appreciated this more-the echo in his step as he walked through the abandoned "town". Just like the scene in the movies where everyone is hiding, waiting for gunfire to erupt.

Emmett would have gotten a kick out of it.

He pushed into the saloon. While it did have a bar it was, of course, a theme park saloon-built to sling juice as well as the local pilsner. It was well lit, though less so with all the dust caked on the window-one of the few still unbroken in the park. He blinked, getting the distinct feeling he was missing something.

Aaron barreled into his legs, happy to see him. Bella, standing behind the bar glanced up at him with a small smile. She glanced up at him from under a cowboy hat. "Well, howdy there, stranger. Haven't seen the likes of you around these here parts."

Edward picked Aaron up, shifting him to one arm. He raised an eyebrow at Bella. "What's happening right now?"

She pressed her lips together, as though struggling to maintain her facial expression. She ran a rag over the counter idly. Her eyes scanned him a beat before she responded, nodding to the stool in front of the counter. "Come sit a spell. Take a load off."

A tingle of amusement wormed its way into his heavy heart. He moved to the stool and set Aaron down on the bar. A strangled sound that was almost a laugh came out when he realized she wasn't just wearing a hat. Oh, no. She was in full gunslinger gear-cowboy shirt, boots, and a holster with an obviously fake gun. Her lip twitched, but she managed to keep a straight face as she settled a cowboy hat on his head. "There. Now no one will think you're some city slicker."

He cleared his throat, still disoriented. Just moments ago he'd been drowning in grief and despair.

And that was the point, he realized belatedly. She was trying to make him laugh.

A spot of warmth, a flickering match in the cold, lit in the center of his being. He smiled gently and tipped his hat. "Thank you kindly, ma'am," he said in his worst cowboy accent.

The hint of uncertainty in her eyes-how long had it been since she'd tried to laugh herself, let alone make anyone else laugh-faded. She cocked her head. "Care to wet your whistle?"

"That sounds swell."

"Yer in luck." She reached beneath the bar and took out some cups. Souvenir cups with the themepark's logo on them, he saw with some bemusement. "Jus' so happens, I found some supplies." She reached beneath the bar again and Edward's eyes nearly popped out of his head.

"Beer? You found beer."

"I was surprised too," she said in her normal voice. "The storeroom was a wreck. It was just luck." She shrugged. "I'm sure it tastes like crap by now, especially since it's not cold, but…"

"It's beer. A beer after a hard day…" He shook his head. "I'll take it."

She opened two bottles and handed one to him. Edward gently took Aaron's grabby hands off the bottle, ignoring his cry of protest, and drank.

"Blegh." It did taste terrible. He stared at the bottle a beat and then shrugged. Tilting his head back, he chugged.

"Do you want to talk about it?" Bella asked quietly, handing him a second beer when he clunked the first down on the bar.

He shrugged, staring down at the bottle in his hand, swallowing down the bitter aftertaste. "Nothing to talk about."

"You didn't find anything." It wasn't a question. "I figured, but you had to know." She reached a hesitant hand out and touched his arm as she had that morning. "No news isn't bad news, you know. It just means she hasn't passed through here."

Edward couldn't look at her. His eyes blurred, and he had to stare off. His jaw locked, but he nodded, acknowledging he'd heard her.

 _I want. I want. I want. I want._

Edward stood. For a few seconds, he felt crazed. He clenched and unclenched his fists and shook his head hard, not wanting to cry. Some instinct, some cry to action, rose in him. He had to be able to do something. Even if it was just to grab a glass and start shattering things. He had to do something.

Unthinking, he went around the bar. Bella started, but she didn't bolt. He grabbed her, pulling to him in a crushing hug, clinging to her like she was the last person in his entire world because, right then, she was.

Moments went by as he tried to convince himself to stop being an asshole. Before he could let go, though, her hand was soft on his back. His breath hitched, and he began to breathe again. He shuddered as she stroked his hair.

She didn't say it would be okay. Of course, she wouldn't. She couldn't promise that. But she did comfort him.

And she had tried to make him smile.

It was enough to ground him. It was enough for him to find his hope again.

He squeezed her tightly once and then stepped back. He dug a palm into his eyes. "Bella?"

"Hmm?"

"Was that a chicken outside? Where the hell did you find a chicken."

"Oh." She huffed. "Not a chicken."

He sniffed again, calming further, and looked at her.

"It's a duck."

"A duck."

"There were a bunch of them in the…you know…duck pond."

He had to smirk. The pond where parents had taken their little children to admire the duckies. The duckies who were now his dinner.

"Duck and really bad beer," he mused.

What a world.

* * *

 **A/N: I will be back! Hopefully sooner than later.**

 **So many thanks to my group who helped me with names and cheers. We have such fun.**


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